God Only Knows
by Columbia15
Summary: For those of us who can't wait until the fall: a pre-imagining of season two, picking up where the season one finale left off. Bellamy struggles to reunite with the 100, Abby faces serious challenges on the ground, Jaha searches for a way to escape certain death in space, and Clarke clashes with the mysterious Mountain Men. Slow burn Bellarke.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes:** So, I started publishing this on another site in mid June, a week after the finale. And now I'm publishing it here, too. I'm four chapters into it already, so I'm gonna post one a day for the next four days. Then the new chapters will start coming out about once a week. I hope you all like it!

* * *

**Bellamy**

"Someone's coming."

Bellamy held his breath and sat as still as he possibly could, trying to ignore the unbelievable pain in his rib cage. For all the smoke still hanging in the air and the darkness of the night, he could barely see the trees right in front of the foxhole. But of course, Finn the Tracker was squinting out into the forest with solemn confidence.

After what felt like an hour, Finn turned to Bellamy and held his finger to his lips. Then with the same finger he pointed out spots among the trees and held up the other hand to give numbers: three behind that bush, two at the base of that tree, five went past the foxhole toward the drop ship. Bellamy shook his head slowly and shrugged. Who is it? He tried to ask silently. Finn shrugged back, but raised his eyebrows in a significant way that Bellamy didn't fully understand.

With his one good eye that wasn't swollen shut, Bellamy assessed Finn's condition. If he looked at him from the right side, he seemed fine: same old Spacewalker. But when Finn turned his head far enough, Bellamy could see that a good chunk of his hair had burned off and there was a crispy-looking area on his left forearm. In fact, Finn's whole left side seemed a bit pinker than it should have been. Bellamy tried not to grimace at him and freak him out. Maybe he was fine. If he was in any significant pain, it didn't show.

The fireball was still replaying in Bellamy's mind. If they had been only a couple of seconds slower… At first Bellamy thought Finn was just going to sit there and stare at the sealed drop ship and wait for death. As soon as the Grounders were distracted, Bellamy grabbed him around the chest and dragged him away. He had just pulled Finn out of the tunnel to safety when it happened. Blinding orange flames belched out through the tunnel opening and licked at Finn's side as he turned away. Finn's left arm came up to shield his face. Bellamy could hear screaming everywhere. Some of the screaming might have been coming from Finn. Maybe Bellamy had screamed too. And then it was just quiet and dark and smoky. That's when they got up and ran to the nearest foxhole to wait.

And now there were these people lurking in the woods.

Time passed with no movement. The sun rose and Bellamy could finally see them clearly. They all wore identical olive drab jumpsuits, balaclavas, and gas masks. And they each carried semi-automatic rifles.

Finn tried to mouth something to him, but it wasn't making any sense. Mount me? Mount me?! What? Bellamy thought, wrinkling his nose at the boy.

Just as Finn was rolling his eyes, a grinding metallic sound started up behind them. The drop ship door was opening. The strangers in the woods burst silently into action, closing in on the camp. Bellamy twisted around in place to watch them through the dense branches at the back of the foxhole. First they threw a bunch of canisters over the wall, releasing thick clouds of bright red smoke. Bellamy drew his shirt up over his nose and mouth, but he was probably far away enough that it wasn't really necessary. Beyond the wall, the kids were coughing. Then the attackers turned on green laser sights on their rifles and walked calmly through the gate.

He and Finn couldn't see what was happening from where they sat, but they could hear the static sound of radio communication and low voices. Shortly after, a whole platoon of these guys came marching up through the trees carrying stretchers and pulling carts. None of their equipment looked cobbled together or dirty and everything they did was efficient and synchronized. It was only a few minutes later that they started hauling unconscious kids out of the camp and off into the forest.

As they filed past, Bellamy craned his neck trying to get a good look at each one of the remaining hundred they brought out. Harper, Miller, Sterling… he said their names silently in his head while scraping a tally mark in the dirt for each one. Clarke, Fox, Jasper… When he saw a Grounder carried along with them, his hand paused for a moment. Anya… Jones, Graham, Trina, Monroe, Huxley…

Somewhere around the time when his tally got to forty, he knew he wasn't going to be able to memorize the names of everyone who the strangers took. That didn't stop him from trying. They kept coming and coming. It was a relief, really, that there were so many still alive and only one Grounder among them.

Finally they brought Raven out on the flat bed of a cart. Was she still alive? Bellamy heard Finn gasp and he turned to look at him. What was that face he was making? For once the Spacewalker didn't look smug or self-righteous. He just looked like a scared kid, which Bellamy supposed he was, after all.

"Sixty. Exactly sixty," Bellamy said when the last of them disappeared into the trees.

"Anya doesn't count."

"I didn't count her."

"We should go after them."

"I don't think Clarke…"

"Oh, now you wanna run from the fight? Now that you almost died?"

Bellamy smirked. That was the Spacewalker he had come to know. Finn's eyes were fierce as they bored into Bellamy. He was nearly shouting now, "This all happened because of you. Sixty left alive? How many deaths does that make today? Just today?"

"Did I just hallucinate those laser sights?" Bellamy asked. Finn scoffed and looked away as Bellamy pressed on. "No, seriously. Did we both see the same thing happen just now? Who the fuck were those guys? They weren't Grounders and they sure as shit weren't Reapers."

"Mountain Men."

Oh. Mountain Men.

"They're in Lincoln's book. He told Octavia about them. He said they'd kill us all. But that's it. That's all I know."

Bellamy pursed his lips and nodded to himself. That sounded about right. Another secret no one wanted to tell them. Another impossible fight. But at least now he had an excuse to go after Octavia.

"So we find Lincoln," he said. "I assume you know where?"

**Abby**

As beautiful as it was, it took a lot of getting used to. Everything was so spectacularly bright. It was like she could feel the physical weight of the photons pressing into her from all sides, all of the time. She just let it happen. She let herself be irradiated and imagined that she was being cleaned. Sterilized. Made new.

"Abby," Jaha said in her ear. "I have something for you to hear. Do you have a minute?"

"Sure."

"Okay. Here goes."

She closed her eyes. There was a pop and a quiet hiss. It was music: a piano and an accordion with a French horn soaring above them. Then the mellow plunking of a bass guitar, sleigh bells, and a gentle rhythm tapped out on the drums. A sweet male voice sang: I may not always love you, but long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it, I'll make you so sure about it…

Abby realized she was holding her breath and let it all out in a burst, half laughing, half sighing. Her eyes fluttered open again. The music and the sunshine were the same and they needed to be experienced together. From her perch sitting on top of the half-submerged space station, her feet dangling over the edge, she slowly panned her gaze across the landscape while she listened. The lake was so still, its surface was a perfect mirror. Snow-capped mountains ran around the full ring of the horizon. The scene was so neatly framed, it was hard to wrap her head around the idea that beyond those mountains was an even vaster expanse. From space, the Earth was just an island in the blackness of infinity. But down here, the Earth was everything and boundless. Clarke could be just over the next ridge.

The song was blossoming into layer upon layer of vocal harmonies and string arrangements: And God only knows what I'd be without you… Chills ran over Abby's body. She couldn't stop herself from crying and she didn't want to. Jaha could probably hear her coughing and sniffling, but they were long past the point of hiding these things from each other.

When the song faded out and the hot, choking sensation in her throat finally subsided, she took a deep breath and asked Jaha, "What was that?"

"God Only Knows by The Beach Boys. United States of America, 1966," Jaha said, using his calm, authoritative Chancellor voice.

"That was a really good one."

"Yeah…"

Just then, on the shore, Kane and his two deputies appeared through the pine trees. They were hustling towards the makeshift raft where it was weighted down on the beach. From that distance Abby couldn't read their faces, but she immediately stood up.

"Kane is back," she said to Jaha.

"You sound worried."

"They definitely found…something. I'll report back as soon as I get a chance, okay?"

"Okay, Abby."

"Don't take off your headset. Just in case."

"Okay."

Kane splashed out into the water, dragging the raft away from the sand and pulling himself up onto it. He was coming out to the space station by himself, Abby realized. It was painful for her to watch him struggling with the long metal pipe he was using as an oar. She could practically feel the burn in her own shoulders every time he heaved the thing forward.

When he was within range, he started shouting to her: "Abby! Get the med kit! We found more! It's Tesla! It's not good!"

Jackson was on Tesla, Abby thought, but forced herself to focus on the more immediate issue. What was in the med kit? She had been able to pack up most of her surgical instruments and what was left of the sutures. There was a fair amount of gauze, iodine, isopropanol, and lidocaine, but they already used up so many things in those last few days on the Ark. And everything left over had been divvied up to each of the space stations for their descent. Hopefully there would be some salvageable supplies on Tesla.

She practically jumped down through the hatch into the space station. It crossed her mind for probably the thousandth time how lucky Mecha had been. The lake cushioned their fall and everything landed right side up. What were the odds of that?

There were still about forty-five people just sort of loitering around the hallways inside the station, waiting for instructions. Or at least just waiting for someone to figure out how they were all going to get to the shore from the middle of the damn lake. Abby felt their eyes following her as she jogged over to the compartment in the wall panel where she had stashed the supplies. She called out generally to the group, "Does anybody here know any first aid?"

"What's going on?" someone asked.

Abby turned to them and considered for a moment. If she just came right out and told them that Tesla station crashed in the forest and there were injuries, how would they react? Would they panic? No, they were survivors. They had faced certain death together. They could deal with this too.

"Kane's group found more survivors out there and they need emergency assistance," she said. There were a few quiet gasps, but everyone stayed calm and attentive. "Anyone who wants to come and help should go up to the surface. We can ferry people to land, but only three at a time, so I need to prioritize anyone with medical experience. And if someone could please help me get these supplies up top…"

That set them into noisy action. Everyone turned and started shuffling into a line, filing up the ladder and out into the sunlight. A dark-haired woman in a heavy knitted cowl stepped toward Abby and held out her hands. "Please. Let me help you, Doctor Griffin."

"Thank you. We have to move fast."

**Thelonious**

Dying in space was very boring.

Every step along the corridors echoed so bleakly that it didn't take long for Thelonious to just decide to take off his damn boots. Maybe it was the scotch talking, but why not? No one would ever know.

In a way, he felt guilty when he spoke to Abby. What good could he do for her now? He couldn't help them, even in small ways. He had tried, but he couldn't even figure out where they landed. He couldn't tell them how far they were from the kids. He couldn't direct them to any old government bunkers or supply depots. Something was jamming the global positioning system. He was useless. She should be focused on survival, not keeping him company while he slowly suffocated. But he couldn't help himself. The sound of her voice was like water on a burn.

Maybe he came on too strong with that song, he considered. Or maybe he wasn't being obvious enough…

"What am I doing?" he said to no one.

Thelonious waited on the deck for hours, but Abby never got back to him. He sat with the bottle of scotch and watched all of his video clips of Wells. Then he cried for a solid thirty minutes. Then he figured out how rig the public address system to play the digital music archive on an endless stream. And then he and his scotch went on a walk through what was left of the Ark.

The Go-Sci ring rolled aimlessly through black space. If he stared through the big windows in the mess hall long enough, he almost felt dizzy, watching the Earth rotate through the frame, then the Sun, then the Earth, then the Sun…

There had to be something he could do to help. Thelonious was never an engineer, but he had done reasonably well in electronics classes as a kid. If he was going to be sitting around with nothing to do for a week, he may as well crack some books and see if could get that damn positioning system working again.

Almost everything useful was either down on Earth now with Abby or was already blown to bits somewhere in the upper atmosphere, but there were still operations manuals and schematics for Ark floating around in lockers and under desks. After a bit of looking he came up with a huge, dusty binder full of wiring diagrams for each of the computer systems on the deck. The pages were yellow and stiff and he accidentally spilled a couple of drops of scotch on some of them, but the information was still there. Perfect. Now he would need some wires and such.

All of the old broken bits of electronics were dumped in the scrap room on far side of Go-Sci. Bottle of scotch in hand, Thelonious skated there on the slippery soles of his socks. It was amazing how just having a task ahead of him cheered him up. He could almost hear the smile in Abby voice when he told her where she was and how to get to Clarke. He could almost feel Wells' encouraging hand on his shoulder.

While he sifted gleefully through piles of junk in the scrap heap, he sang along loudly with the music blasting over the PA: "Freude, schöner Götterfunken, tochter aus Elyyyyysium! Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische dein Heeeeeeeeiligtum!"

But when he moved a big sheet of metal paneling out of his way, he fell into stunned silence. A shuttle! A goddamn broken-down space shuttle! It was very dusty, very small, and could probably only support one or two people over short distances. Thelonious wiped at the dust on the windshield until he could see his own stunned reflection staring back at him in the glass. The thing certainly didn't look to be in any kind of shape for space travel, but maybe if he could get some help from Sinclair and had enough time, it could be fixed.

What does this mean, he thought. Am I saved? Another thought floated up from the darker part of his brain and he recognized it immediately: he didn't want to be saved anymore. He was already at peace with his death. In fact, if he was honest with himself, he had been looking for an excuse to die for weeks now. Ever since Wells…

Beethoven still ringing in his ears, Thelonious closed his eyes and saw Wells's face. Wells was always there, perfect and peaceful, waiting for him. His little boy, brave and noble and in love with life. What would he think of his father if he gave in to death instead of fighting until the very end?

His hand flew up to his ear, looking for his headset, but it wasn't there. It was back on the deck! He climbed out of the mess, making a huge clattering noise and stepping on agonizing little chunks of metal in his stocking feet. Then he was slipping down the hall as fast as he could go. At one point, he lost traction and wiped out entirely, but he was up again like a bolt.

When he made it back he was winded and feeling like he was about to vomit. He grabbed the headset and jammed it into his ear. His fingers flew over the controls on the touchscreen, shutting down the music on the PA and switching on the radio.

"Abby?! Abby?!"

No answer. He reconfigured his settings for Sinclair's frequency.

"Chancellor?" Through the static Thelonious could hear the stress in Sinclair's voice. In the background, he could also hear something that sounded like a crying woman.

"Sinclair, what's going on down there?"

"We found Tesla Station, sir. They landed on a mountainside not far from Mecha. There are casualties…at least thirty. People are still trapped inside."

"That's terrible… I'm so sorry."

"Was there something you needed, sir, or…?"

"Before I let you get back to work…I just wanted to tell you quickly. I found an old shuttle in the bottom of the scrap heap. It might be too far gone, but I thought that maybe when you get a chance, you could help me figure it out?"

There was a brief silence on Sinclair's end. When he spoke again, Thelonious could hear him smiling, "Sir, that's wonderful news. But I don't know how long it will be 'til I can switch gears from this rescue mission. Do you think you can get started on the research while you wait? There should be a technical manual for those shuttles somewhere in the engineering database."

"Yes. Yes, Sinclair, I will get right on that. Thank you so much. Good luck down there."

"Thank you, sir. Good luck to you, too."

In the silence, Thelonious let out a long stream of air. Suddenly he felt all the little scrapes and cuts and bruises from his mad dash back from the scrap heap. And his head was pounding. If he was going to get anything done, he would have to sober up.

**Clarke**

Clarke gasped for air. Every time she tried to breathe in, her throat squeezed itself shut. Soon there was a tingling sensation at the nape of her neck, as if her head were going numb, and all she could hear was the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears. She could still see Monty's terrified face through the little round window across the hall, but the edges of her vision were getting dark. She was going into a tunnel. There were stars and fireflies and then…

She was back in the bed, staring up at the grid of lights in the ceiling. She tried to think, to put the pieces together. Her brain raced, but wouldn't go in a straight line: This is Mount Weather – Finn and Bellamy are dead – How long has Monty been here – The Ark came down – Rocket fuel – Starry Night – Anya said "Mountain Men" – Quarantine – What happened to Raven –There's electricity here – I burned them all – There's medicine here – Gas masks and lasers – The Ark exploded – Bellamy and Finn burned alive – Red smoke – Reapers – Skeletons – Ash…

"Clarke Griffin," said a voice very nearby.

Clarke turned her head to the sound. A man sat on the white couch under the painting. She pushed herself up onto her elbows to get a better look at him. He was relatively young, probably around forty, with a slight build. His brown hair and beard were neatly trimmed and shot through with threads of silver. He wore faded black slacks and a collared black shirt, both obviously quite old but impeccably ironed. He sat patiently with his back straight and his hands folded in his lap. On his left index finger was a massive square emerald ring encrusted with diamonds.

"How are you feeling, Clarke?"

"Who are you? How do you know my name?"

"My name is Eusebius," he said, standing and walking to her bedside. "Are you well? You hit your head when you fainted and I'm sure you haven't eaten in some time."

He rolled the hospital-style tray table closer to the bed and gestured towards the untouched bowl of yellow broth. Clarke looked down at the bowl, then up to Eusebius's face, wrinkling her nose.

"It's very nutritive."

"Maybe later."

Eusebius pouted slightly and inclined his head. "Clarke, I want to talk to you about what happened last night. With the Wick… the Grounders, I believe you call them?"

Clarke raised an eyebrow.

"That was quite a trick you pulled. A ring of fire!" He paced to the end of the bed, waving his hands expressively and widening his eyes. "Fire is socleansing, don't you agree, Clarke?"

"What is this?" she asked, pushing away the mental image of Finn and Bellamy's charred remains.

The man leaned forward, placed the palms of his hands on the foot of her bed and looked her squarely in the eyes. "I'm sorry, dear. I know you're upset, but we're the ones asking the questions for now. You'll get your turn later. Now tell me: why did you do it?"

"Why?"

"You kicked the hornet's nest. You came down here and you upset everything. You disrupted a whole people's way of life and, when they defended themselves, you slaughtered them in a vulgar display of power. What I want to know is, from your point of view, why you felt that was necessary."

The use of that phrase – "kicked the hornet's nest" – brought Clarke a vision of Finn saying those exact words just hours earlier. Biting her lip to stop from it from trembling, she looked down at the too-white sheets and considered. What would Finn have done in this situation? He was always so conciliatory. If he had his way in the beginning, maybe the war with the Grounders would never have happened at all. Finn would tell her to give this Eusebius guy the benefit of the doubt. Be honest with him, make him see their side of the story, and look for some kind of compromise.

But just as soon as Clarke knew what Finn's advice would be, she could hear Bellamy growling in her head, Who the fuck is this Eusebius for you to trust him? These assholes captured you and Monty and probably everyone else and put you in glorified cages like a goddamn science experiment. They know your name, they know what you've been doing, and they won't answer any of your questions. These people are our enemies, Clarke. You should whip that bowl of shit right at his face and bust your way out of there!

She knew Bellamy made just as many bad decisions as good ones. And there were times when Clarke wished she had listened to Finn instead of going her own way. In the end, all she really felt was an intense desire to be done with making decisions. She was so tired. Everything was so heavy.

"I need you to answer one question first," she said finally.

Eusebius straightened up and folded his arms across his chest. His expression was unreadable at first, but then he slowly nodded his head. "Alright. You can ask one question. But I can't guarantee that I will be able to answer it."

"We had an injured girl with us in the drop ship…"

"Raven Reyes."

"Yes!" Clarke straightened up, hope shooting through her like an electric shock. "Is she alive? Is she here?"

"That's two questions, Clarke…"

Without thinking, she grabbed the heavy glass bowl off the tray and flung it at Eusebius, but his reflexes were quick and he shielded his head just in time. Thin yellow liquid splattered everywhere and the bowl shattered against the tiled floor.

"Clarke…" He gave her a chiding, disappointed look and shook the soup from his shirtsleeves. "I can see you need a little more time to come to terms with your situation."

Her heart was pounding, but her head was empty. She watched him walk to the door, crunching on the glass shards, and she felt more helpless and childish than she had felt in her entire time on the ground so far. Just before he slipped out, he turned to her and gave her a half-hearted smile.

"Raven is with us, Clarke. But how she fares here depends in large part upon you."

And then he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Abby**

Tesla station was smeared down the mountainside in scorched chunks of twisted metal. The air was hazy and everything smelled of fuel and smoke. There was shouting and crying all around, severely testing Abby's ability to think clearly in the midst of chaos. But this was the job. This was what it meant to be a doctor. When someone's world collapsed, she had to be the one to put it back together again.

At the moment, the person whose world was collapsing was Jackson.

"I need a drill," Abby said to Anita, the woman who had become her medical assistant somehow.

"A…mechanical drill?"

"Something that I can use to bore a hole through bone."

Anita looked positively queasy at the thought, but they'd seen worse together over the past day. There had been the guy with compound fractures in his tibia and fibula, the boy whose eyeball was hanging from the socket connected only by blood vessels and the optic nerve, the eviscerated woman…

These were the kinds of wounds you didn't ever really see on the Ark. It was hard to build up the necessary momentum in such confined spaces. But when you're falling from space at terminal velocity in a burning metal cube, the horror became very real. At least they were finally seeing the last of the major injuries.

"How am I gonna find something like that?"

"Um…" Abby sat back on her heels and surveyed the scene for inspiration. "Do you know Councilman Kane?"

"I know _of_ him. I know what he looks like."

"That's good enough. He'll be able to help you. Please tell him it's for Jackson. Tell him I have to drill a small hole in his skull."

Jackson had seemed relatively okay when they first arrived at the Tesla crash site. He was running around tending to the wounded when he suddenly came down with a massive headache. Watching him hold his head, stumble to his knees and vomit, Abby knew pretty quickly what was going on.

"Did you hit your head in the crash?" she had asked him, holding his drowsy eyes open and seeing how the pupils were unevenly dilated. Jackson looked confused, but nodded and gingerly touched his fingers to his hairline. That was the spot. Epidural hematoma. She had to drill and drain the blood before the pressure on his brain caused serious damage.

While she waited for Anita to bring Kane, Jackson drifted into unconsciousness. Abby prepared the operating field as best she could with her limited stash of equipment. She wiped down the metal tray with alcohol and then started on her instruments. As she worked, she spoke quietly to Jackson, "You helped a lot of people here. And once we get this sorted out, you're gonna help a lot more. I need you. Do you understand? You are not allowed to die today."

"Is he awake?"

Abby twisted around to see Kane standing behind her holding a hand drill. He was grimacing and she recognized a certain look in his eyes that she had seen way too often over the last month or so: staring, disbelieving, and despairing. He was going to need a better poker face if he was going to lead these people now.

"No, he passed out," Abby said. "Anita, I need you to please sit right here and keep Jackson's head _very_ still. Marcus, can you hold him down?"

Hopefully that would be enough. They got into position and Abby wiped the bruise on Jackson's forehead with iodine. Then she took the scalpel and made and incision in his skin. She had to stop herself from calling out "forceps" like she would have done back in her operating room on the Ark with Jackson there helping her.

She reflected the flap of skin back, revealing blood and bone, and then glanced up at her two assistants to make sure they were still with her. Grabbing ahold of the hand drill, Abby scooted in as close as she could get on her knees and lined up the bit.

_Six and a half millimeters_, she told herself. _Steady…_

Slowly at first, she cranked the handle clockwise. It was working. The bone was visibly shaving away into white powder. Pressing down just hard enough to maintain even contact, she kept going at a careful pace. After several agonizing minutes, her muscles screaming out from the tension, she felt a tiny but abrupt change in resistance and she knew she had broken through. She slid the bloody drill bit out and set it on the ground next to the tray.

Before picking up her squirt bottle of distilled water, she looked over at Kane. He was white as a sheet and chewing at his bottom lip. As they made eye contact he blurted out at her, "Is that it? Did it work?"

"I don't know yet," she said. "Just one more minute."

She could see the clotting blood now through the small hole. Holding the nozzle of the water bottle close, she irrigated as best she could. As she did, Jackson's eyes fluttered open, he groaned horribly, and his body tried to jerk away from her. Kane and Anita held on.

"Jackson, you're okay," Abby said, laying her hand on his cheek. His pupils were evening out now as he stared up at her, but his eyes were filled with terrified pain. "I know it hurts, but you're okay."

"What's next?" Anita asked once the suturing process was over. She lifted a hand from the side of Jackson's head to wipe a strand of hair out of her face, accidentally streaking blood across her forehead in the process.

Abby gave her a wry smile and then looked over to Kane. His gaze scanned around the smoldering, bloody scene. Finally, he swallowed hard and nodded. "Let's split into groups. One team to work on setting up camp down in the valley, another for gathering firewood. The others should bury the dead."

"What about the kids?"

"Abby, with the nav. system knocked out, we have to rely on those old maps. The terrain's changed. We hardly know where to start. We have to think of the people around us here and now…"

She could feel hot tears welling up in her eyes. Kane was getting that hard look again: the one he wore when he presided over her near execution a few weeks ago. The same look he wore when he voted to kill 320 innocent people. Abby closed her eyes tight until the high wave of anger subsided, then turned back to Jackson and smoothed his bloody hair away from his face. _Just when I was beginning to think Kane might not be such an asshole…_

**Thelonious**

It felt like it took the whole day, but Thelonious finally had a path cleared from the shuttle to the doors of the scrap room. There wasn't much room left to maneuver; there were basically six foot walls of electronic garbage on either side of a narrow aisle. _Like parting the Red Sea_, he thought to himself. He would just have to have faith that it wouldn't all suddenly cave in on him.

With a scarf tied over his mouth and nose, he brushed nearly 100 years of dust off of the shuttle. It came sloughing off in disgusting chunks, revealing black silica ceramic tiles. As he kept wiping, he came across the information he really needed: a serial number stenciled on in white spray paint next to the national flag of Venezuela.

A memory washed over him from back when the kids were small. Wells was learning Spanish in school and had asked him what felt like a thousand questions about the history of the language. Where did it come from? Why did they learn it on the Ark? Thelonious started to tell him all about the Venezuelan space station, but then…

"_Where did the thirteenth station come from?"_

"_Who told you about that?" _

"_Clarke."_

_Thelonious shook his head and laughed internally. He loved Jake and Abby, but sometimes… "It belonged to a small country in Asia called North Korea."_

"_What happened to it?"_

_This was the problem with children: always with the tough questions. "Wells, you know there was a big war. The Earth was a hard place to live and there wasn't enough food and water and supplies for everybody. All the countries got into a fight about what to do and everybody on the ground died." His son nodded solemnly, brown eyes as big as saucers. "And when the people on the space stations saw what happened, they were ashamed and sorry. They all wanted to stop fighting, but North Korea didn't agree."_

"_Why not?"_

"_That's a very good question," Thelonious said, meaning it very sincerely. "The other stations didn't understand, either. If there was nothing left on Earth to fight over... I guess North Korea was just too proud to stop."_

"_They didn't like the other space stations?"_

"_Wells, the important thing to understand is this: North Korea, China, and Russia were all on the same side in the war. But the Chinese and Russian space stations were brave enough to try to get along with their enemies, so they're still with us and we're all friends now."_

_Wells was nodding in emphatic agreement. He held onto his father's hand and declared very seriously: "We have to work together to survive."_

_Thelonious beamed at him. "That's exactly right. Nobody can do it all by themselves."_

When the ache in his chest faded, Thelonious walked back to the deck. The Bach cantata playing over the public address system transitioned from an aria to a chorale and he quickened his pace to match the music's mood.

"ABAE-1302. ABAE-1302. ABAE-1302" He chanted the serial number under his breath as he walked. But when he finally sat down at the console and punched it into the database, the screen came up blank. No results.

Thelonious ran his hands over his face and took a deep breath. He would have to hassle poor Sinclair after all. A few minutes later, he had him on the headsets.

"How are things on the ground, Sinclair?"

"Calming down, sir. There's a campfire going now and we've started building some shelters."

"Do you have a head count on the survivors yet?"

"Seventy-three total. Thirty-one men, forty-two women, twelve of them are children younger than eighteen."

"That's good, Sinclair. That's very good." He knew Abby and Kane wouldn't let them down.

"Sir, are you making any progress with the shuttle?"

Thelonious sighed. "It's Venezuelan, but I didn't find the serial number in the computers. Do you know if we kept any hard copies of the files from Arrow station?"

A wave of static passed through their transmission and obscured the next thing that Sinclair said. Thelonious slid his fingers over the console, trying to find a better frequency, but it only seemed to get worse. Then the random squeals and scratches suddenly resolved themselves into high-pitched, quavering tone.

Thelonious pulled the headset away from his ear, wincing. But as he turned from the console in frustration, he saw the global positioning system flickering rhythmically out of the corner of his eye. "What the hell…"

"Sir! Sir!" Sinclair's voice was back, sounding tiny and distant coming from the cast off headset.

"I'm here, Sinclair. Are you hearing this interference? I think it's resonating with the nav. system…"

"I _do_ hear it, sir. It's…we're being deliberately jammed."

"What do you mean? How can that be…"

"It must be coming from someone else on the ground."

**Clarke**

A-R-E Y-O-U O-K-?

Monty nodded his head and raised his hand to the window. One letter at a time, he spelled out the next message: W-H-E-R-E A-R-E W-E-?

M-T-. W-E-A-T-H-E-R

His face contorted in surprised and Clarke could identify with the feeling. What a weird way for all of this to pan out. What did it all mean? The skull in the woods, the spear in Jasper's chest… Monty interrupted her train of thought by hurriedly drawing out a new sentence: T-H-E-Y B-R-O-U-G-H-T O-T-H-E-R-S

W-H-O-?

Shaking his head, Monty transitioned into pantomime. He drew a "J" on the window then made circles with his hands against his forehead. Clarke nodded and said the name: "Jasper." He drew an "M" and pulled a mean, sneering face. "Miller." Next was an "F," which he elaborated on by indicating very long hair and a dour expression. "Fox."

Seeing this could take a while, Clarke waived her hand in front of the window and started writing out questions again: H-O-W M-A-N-Y-?

Monty held up five fingers with one hand and the other in an "O." Then he shrugged. He wasn't sure.

R-A-V-E-N-?

They were so focused on each other that neither of them noticed the person coming down the hallway until a face suddenly appeared on the other side of the glass, just inches from Clarke's nose. She took a big step backwards, feeling her pulse skyrocket, and immediately considered grabbing one of the chunks of the glass bowl from the ground for self-defense.

The door swung open just enough for the visitor to peek her head around and look inside. It was a young woman with strikingly pale skin and long, mousy brown hair. She made eye contact with Clarke but stayed frozen in place.

"Hello," Clarke said.

"Hello, Miss Clarke. I came to clean up the mess…" She held out a whisk broom and dustpan as she stepped fully into the white room. Clarke mentally catalogued every detail from the woman's ill-fitting olive green jumpsuit and worn out boots to her ragged fingernails and split ends. Did they really send her a pushover, just as easy as that? _Might as well try for some answers, _she thought.

"What's your name?" Clarke asked mildly, pacing back to the bed and hopping up to sit on the edge. The woman looked nervous and knelt down to sweep up the glass without responding, so Clarke turned up the charm a bit. She let her bare feet swing off the ground and tilted her head slightly to one side, "You know my name. I'd like to know yours."

"Mary."

"It's pretty boring down here, Mary. There's nobody to talk to."

"You can always talk to Eusebius."

_Of course. _Clarke scrunched up her face and bit her bottom lip. "Yeah, but he's…it's not the same as talking to my friends. I need someone who really understands me."

Mary stood up and crossed to the small trash bin near the sink. "Eusebius is the most understanding person I've ever known," she said, dumping the chunks of glass inside the bin then pulling out the bag and twisting the opening into a knot.

"I can't imagine you get to know too many people down here in quarantine, though." She may have been imagining it, but Clarke thought she saw Mary wince. That was the direction to push. "Mary, don't you worry about getting sick? Shouldn't you be taking precautions?"

"That's not necessary, Miss Clarke," the woman said, lifting her chin and meeting Clarke's gaze with sad eyes. "It's not that kind of quarantine."

"It isn't?"

"It's a kind of…spiritual quarantine."

_What? _Clarke tried to keep her expression steady, but a large part of her needed to react. Her feet stopped swinging, her muscles tensed. She looked away from Mary and surveyed her white room again: Bed, sink, toilet, couch, chair, painting on the wall, security camera over the door… "I'm _spiritually_ sick?"

"We don't know, Miss Clarke. But we need to keep you here until we can be sure."

"Am I _contagious_?" Now she was worried that her skepticism was too obvious. This had to be some kind of twisted prank. A science experiment.

"Don't worry, I can't be infected. And Eusebius is very strong."

"Wait," Clarke said as Mary turned and walked to the door. "You can't just…I don't understand what any of this means."

"Eusebius will visit again tomorrow and you'll have another opportunity to confess to him. I'm sure if you're sincere, you'll be out of here in no time." Mary smiled and slipped out into the hallway, leaving Clarke sitting on the bed with a furrowed brow and open mouth. Her brain was spinning like a wheel stuck in deep mud, unable to gain traction on anything.

When she was sure Mary was gone, she turned her back to the camera, carefully slid her hand under the mattress, and pulled out a long, sharp piece of the broken bowl. _What the hell am I doing_, she asked herself. It was Bellamy's distant voice that answered her: _You're being smart, Princess. Maybe you'll never need to use it, but_ _it might be the thing that saves your life. _

Clarke stood, opened the top drawer of her tiny bedside table, and stashed the glass shard in the far back of the drawer. But as she did, her hand brushed against something else. A booklet made of heavy, folded paper with a single word printed on the cover in blue: REVELATION.

**Bellamy**

It was pretty freaky how close Lincoln had been to the drop ship this whole time. He must have decided to move a nicer neighborhood after the whole kidnapping and torture incident, Bellamy thought with a smirk.

They approached the steep slope to the underground cave, crunching through dead leaves and snapping fallen branches as they went. The grounder was probably lurking in the entrance, listening to their approach with his knife drawn and ready. Bellamy let Finn lead, just in case.

"Lincoln. Octavia," Finn hissed, "It's Finn and Bellamy."

Nothing happened. For a moment, Bellamy felt a sickening drop in his stomach. They weren't there. They could be halfway to the ocean by now. Or worse, they could have been caught… But then Lincoln leaned out of the shadows and waived them forward.

The cave was warm, lit with scattered candles and a small fire in the middle of the dirt floor. Its rocky walls were covered in paint and charcoal drawings of giant snakes, mutated animals, and mushroom clouds. Any surface that wasn't decorated was carved into shelves that held a modest collection of books, vessels made of clay and bronze, and a few unrecognizable animal skulls.

Bellamy barely registered any of that. His attention flew immediately to Octavia where she sat on a pile of furs. Her right leg was propped up on a stack of books with a bandage wrapped around her exposed thigh.

"Oh, Bell!" She held her arms out to hug him, but her eyes clouded over with concern. "Your _face_! And Finn! What the hell happened?"

"Fucking grounders," Bellamy said and dropped to his knees to embrace her, pressing his lips to her forehead. He felt the hug sharply in his ribs (_Definitely broken_, he thought) but he didn't care. Octavia was still alive and they weren't going to be separated after all. They would never be separated again, if Bellamy had anything to say about it.

"No, Bell, come on. I mean what _happened_? What about everyone else?"

He looked up at Lincoln, then over at Finn. What was he supposed to say? Should he begin by informing Lincoln that all of his people were dead, or should he tell Octavia that her friends were kidnapped? Spacewalker's stupid raised eyebrows and weird pout weren't helping.

"We had this plan to burn the grounders with the rockets on the drop ship. And it worked, but Finn and I got separated from everyone in the fighting. And then these _other_ guys…"

"Wait, wait…" Lincoln interrupted, squatting to get down to Bellamy and Octavia's level. "They all burned?"

Bellamy pressed his lips together and looked him in the eye. He didn't have to say it. Lincoln's jaw clenched and his nostrils flared. Octavia reached out and squeezed Lincoln's hand. It was so strange how less than twelve hours ago Bellamy had been determined to kill them all. But now, looking at this man – the man who saved Octavia's life – the victory felt hollow. It felt like the watching the bodies of three hundred and twenty people burning up in the atmosphere…

"Anya's still alive," Finn said, trying to help. Bellamy saw a hint of some obscure emotion pass over Lincoln's face. Finn sat down with them, holding one Lincoln's drawings up: a gas mask shrouded in smoke. "These guys took her. Along with all of our people."

"The Mountain Men? No…your people are all gone, then."

"Wait, _what_?" Octavia said, looking frantically back and forth between Lincoln and Bellamy.

"My people," Lincoln shook his head, "we tell our children stories about the Mountain Men to keep them obedient, you know? So they don't go off into the woods alone. But not like a ghost story. This is real."

"But _who_…"

"They're our ancestors," He said. When the three of them sat in shocked silence, Lincoln continued almost angrily. "What did they teach you about World War III up in space?"

"The nuclear apocalypse?" Finn asked.

Lincoln snorted. "Not the whole truth, huh? Before the bombs, the U.S. government triggered the Continuity of Operations Plan. The ruling administration abandoned their whole country and went to hide out in the underground facility at Mount Weather."

Octavia and Finn shot each other a meaningful glance. Bellamy remembered too. That was the original plan for their drop ship. That was where Jasper had taken that spear to the chest.

"But those guys were all politicians and warriors. They didn't get along. There was a big disagreement about what they had done and what their future should be. Lines were drawn. More than half of them were driven out into the open and left to be eaten by the Reapers or the radiation or whatever," Lincoln's face glazed over with rage. "Those were our people. Most of them kept traveling until they got to the ocean. My clan stayed in the valleys here."

Bellamy wrapped a comforting arm around Octavia's shoulders, seeing her bewildered expression. "So the Mountain Men are what's left of the government?"

"Who knows what they believe about themselves anymore. They're child-snatching murderers."

"So how do we rescue our people?" Finn asked.

"You haven't seen this place, have you?" Lincoln scoffed. "They're _under_ the mountain and the only way in or out is through this massive gate, five feet thick. It's just not possible."

"There's gotta be a way," Bellamy said, watching Finn flip through Lincoln's sketches as if he were searching for clues. "If your clan came out of Mount Weather, don't they at least know some things about the layout of this place? Anything?"

"You think they would risk their necks to help you now? After you incinerated all of our warriors?" Lincoln asked, his mouth twisting into a malicious smirk. Bellamy saw his point.

"Linc, what about Luna at the sea?" Octavia asked. "We were gonna go there anyway when my leg healed up. It couldn't hurt to _ask_ them, right?"

The grounder thought about it, looking at the girl for a long moment before leaning forward and kissing her on the cheek. Bellamy felt his stomach knot up, but he swallowed it down. Then Lincoln looked at him and Finn in turn and said, "We would have to leave _now_. Get a horse for Octavia and head out at first light. Otherwise, all that's left of your friends will be a pile of bones picked clean in the forest."

Bellamy felt as if he were caught in some current of water, flowing inevitably down the mountain towards the ocean. But where the ocean had represented retreat just twenty-four hours ago, it was now the way forward into the fight. In the candlelight, he could see Octavia and Finn looking to him, silently pleading with him to say yes. He gave Lincoln a firm nod. "Let's do it, then."


	3. Chapter 3

**Thelonious**

"I'm not sure you should be spending time on this, sir."

Thelonious looked up from the console and stared at the empty space ahead of him as if Sinclair were actually standing there on the deck. "It needs to get done."

"Chancellor, you _need_ to start running systems checks on the shuttle. We think you have at least a week of air, maybe two, but it could turn out to be less than that. We don't know. You need to get to the ground as soon as possible. We can get by without the nav. system. We'll figure it out with the maps."

"Theoretically, this should only take a few minutes. All I have to do is recalibrate and set it to a different frequency, right?"

"With all due respect, sir…" Sinclair's voice was shaking. Or maybe it was the poor quality of their connection. "I have a limited amount of time that I can spend with you like this, and I want to use it to get you to the ground."

He knew on some level that Sinclair was right, and he was deeply appreciative. Still, Thelonious hesitated. The captain goes down with the ship, doesn't he? He imagined the moment when he would give Abby the coordinates of the kids' camp. He wanted to tell her personally, to hear the happiness in her voice.

"_Please_, sir."

And he couldn't forget the more ominous issue at hand: who or what was jamming their signal? Clarke had told them all about the people they had encountered on the ground. They were enemies, certainly, but it didn't sound like they had the capacity to pull off something like this. They didn't even have electricity, as far as anyone knew. Just a wild pack of humans defending their turf with knives and spears.

No, there had to be somebody else down there with a very powerful transmitter. The implications… The more Thelonious thought about it, the more uneasy it made him. Somebody on the ground with a transmitter _knew_ the Ark existed and kept silent anyway. And worse than that, they were actively interfering with the Ark. How long had this been going on? Days? Months? _Ninety-seven_ years?

"Chancellor?"

"How do I figure out _where_ on Earth the interference is coming from?"

Thelonious thought he could hear Sinclair sigh painfully before he responded. "That would definitely take longer than a few minutes."

"Let's make a deal, Sinclair. We'll work on both projects. Get me started here on finding this transmitter and I promise to spend all day tomorrow on the shuttle."

"Chancellor, sir, I just want to stress one last time…"

"_Duly noted_, Sinclair! Now tell me how to do this."

"We need to set the Ark's receiving dishes to the jamming frequency and then program them to rotate their orientations in all possible directions until they find the angle that achieves the strongest reception. Then we should be able to triangulate from there. The code should be in the communications database. Try searching 'radiolocation'."

The process was tedious, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy to get it all set up as long as Sinclair was there to walk him through it. Thelonious hit the "execute" command and the program began. A screen on the console showed a map of the Earth's surface that began to fill in with a pale green color. It started on the West Coast as the Ark passed over it.

"I can't just get up and do something else while I'm waiting?" he asked Sinclair.

"You want to be there when the map starts filling in red. When it hits purple, you need to stop the program there so that you don't pass over it and miss your chance to zero in on the spot."

He let Sinclair go for the time being and turned his music back up. This could take hours, but at least he could zone out to Duke Ellington while he stared at the screen. The Earth turned under him and the colors on the map slowly blended from green to yellow to orange across the North American continent.

It didn't take long for Thelonious to realize that the source of the interference was going to be coming from somewhere on the East Coast. And he had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly what he would find. Red was sweeping up over the Appalachian Mountains as he dialed up Sinclair on the headset again.

"You found it already, sir?"

"It's Mount Weather."

"_Mount Weather_? But…"

"It makes sense, doesn't it?"

"Yes and no."

Thelonious tried to recall everything they knew about the place. He had looked at piles of research about it from the planning stages of Project Exodus. The FEMA National Radio System was there, which easily accounted for the high-powered transmitter. But so many other things didn't make sense.

"There are two possibilities," Thelonious said slowly, "Either people have been hiding down there for almost a hundred years, or somebody found the underground facility some time _after_ the bombs."

Sinclair was starting to make a worried humming noise. He could see where this was going, as well. "Sir, if someone made it there before the bombs and they knew we were up there, why wouldn't they contact us? Why didn't they tell us that the ground was safe _years_ ago? It must be somebody else. The grounders…"

The static cut them off again. Thelonious understood it as an explicit message from Mount Weather: _Yes, we are listening to you. No, we are not your friends._

**Bellamy**

Lincoln should have returned hours ago. Somewhere in the back of his mind was a voice telling him that he was an idiot to trust a grounder, but Bellamy was learning how to shut that voice down. It helped to look over at Octavia, smirking mischievously as she chopped away at what was left of Finn's hair with a knife. She believed in Lincoln with her whole heart and Bellamy wanted to believe in Octavia, so he took a breath and forced himself to be patient.

He turned back to the book he had picked up off of one of Lincoln's shelves and kept reading:

_From this state he was awakened – ages later, it seemed – by the pain of sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by the sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fibre of his body and limbs._

"Bell, what do you think?"

He looked up to see Octavia presenting Finn's head with a flourish of her hands. Finn turned from side to side, letting Bellamy get a good view of all the angles. The burned area was still worryingly pink, but at least now his hair was short on both sides. Octavia had left a broad swath of long hair running down the middle from Finn's forehead to the nape of his neck.

Bellamy wrinkled his nose. "I think you'd better just shave it all off."

Finn smirked, rolling his eyes, and Octavia gave her brother a deadpan glare. "Would you like me to shave off that rat's nest _you're_ growing, Bell?"

"Nah, It's getting too cold out," he said. "Hair is nature's hat."

Octavia was about to say something else when they heard noises overhead: the hooves of a horse stomping through dry underbrush. They all tensed, sharing a silent look. _It's time_. Before Bellamy and Finn could even get to their feet, Lincoln was already rushing into the cave and asking simply, "Everyone ready?"

There wasn't anything to prepare. They had the clothes on their backs and that was all. On an impulse, Bellamy held up the book he'd been reading. "Can I bring this?" Lincoln barely even bothered to shrug in response. He knelt, scooped Octavia off the ground effortlessly, and headed back outside.

Bellamy felt his hackles rise, wanting to yell at Lincoln and demand an explanation for where the hell he was all night, but the answer became immediately apparent when he saw the horse, a dark bay, waiting in the cold morning fog. The massive animal was loaded with woolen blankets and overstuffed canvas pack bags, all tied down with broad leather straps. Seeing the bridle made of leather and bones, Bellamy knew that all of this stuff had been stolen from some grounder village under cover of darkness.

They wasted no time. Octavia was lifted onto the horse's back, Lincoln swung himself up behind her, and they were away.

For at least the first hour, they barely spoke. Bellamy and Finn walked a few paces behind the horse, watching its tail twitch from side to side. The sky ahead of them turned pink and the forest started waking up. Bellamy passed the time by going over the list in his head: _Harper, Miller, Sterling, Clarke…_

Finn nudged him, breaking his concentration. The boy pointed to a spot in front of them through the trees and Bellamy saw the thing immediately. It looked like a fox. Its fur was red and its ears were pointy, but something was horribly wrong with its legs. As they got closer, he figured it out: _eight_ legs. The thing skittered away from the oncoming horse, moving like a spider, and Bellamy suddenly felt prickly and nauseous.

"Oh god…" Finn said, sounding like Bellamy felt.

"I don't even understand sometimes," Bellamy shook his head. "These mutations are so fucked."

"Our first day on the ground, Clarke and I saw a deer with two heads."

"Goddamn neutron bombs…"

"She's okay, right?"

"Who?"

"Clarke." Finn looked at him with pleading eyes.

"I don't know."

"I can't stand it. Not knowing… I keep trying to picture her face, but I just see those gas masks and the fire and I can't."

"Yeah," Bellamy said quietly, desperately wanting to talk about anything else. Or better yet, to just be silent again.

"I hurt her and now I don't even know if she's dead or alive. If I get another chance… Do you think she'll forgive me?"

_This again_, Bellamy groaned internally, remembering Raven's heartbroken eyes in his tent. Why couldn't they just leave him out of it? What the hell was he supposed to say here? This was the last thing any of them should be worrying about at this point.

"Look, I don't give a shit about your disaster of a love life."

"What the fuck?"

"If you really want to know what I think, I think that if Clarke is half as strong as I know she is, she probably doesn't even need us to rescue her. We're probably gonna show up and find her sitting on a pile of dead Mountain Men like 'what took you so long' and we're gonna feel like idiots for ever worrying."

Finn nodded with a tiny lop-sided smile and they walked on. The fog was lifting and the sky was icy gray. It had been cold in the Ark most of the time, but nothing to compare with this. Bellamy could feel it in his ribs, where a chilling ache accompanied his every step.

"Finn," Bellamy said, "Thank you for saving my life back there with the grounders."

"I did it for Clarke."

Bellamy didn't know whether to be offended or not. Of course Spacewalker never tried to hide the fact that he hated Bellamy, so he wasn't surprised. But something in the way Finn said the words felt weirdly accusatory.

"We're even, anyway," Finn continued. "You pulled me out of the fire."

Bellamy acknowledged it with a grimace and a nod. Why did it have to be _Finn Collins_ of all people? He would rather be in this position with almost any of the other kids. But here they were, yoked together for the foreseeable future.

_This is gonna be a long fucking walk_.

**Clarke**

A blast of music jolted Clarke out of her uneasy sleep. It was a full orchestra with crashing cymbals playing a stately tune that she recognized from somewhere, but couldn't quite place. As the song marched along, the lights in her white room gradually turned back up to full brightness.

"Are you kidding me?" She muttered to the ceiling.

Clarke must have fallen asleep reading the little book. It was still open, creased from the weight of her forearm. She looked down at the place where she left off and frowned at the words:

_Then the third Angel blew the trumpet, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell into the third part of the rivers, and into the fountains of water._

This was the kind of thing they learned about in history classes on the Ark: religion, religious prophecy, religious wars… Clarke didn't understand everything she had read, but at least she had some sense of what she was dealing with. _Spiritual quarantine_, she thought with a sigh._ If you're sincere, you'll be out of here in no time_.

"Good morning, Clarke!" Eusebius was in the doorway, carrying a fresh bowl of broth. He gave her a smug smile as he approached.

"Good morning."

"Hungry?"

Clarke nodded. She hadn't eaten in days, come to think of it. Just water. But besides that, she was starting to get an idea about how she needed to play this. She would have to make them believe she was compliant.

She took the bowl from his hands and drank it down, ignoring the spoon. While he waited, Eusebius paced around the room. He spent a moment admiring Starry Night on the wall then settled down in the armchair next to the door. When she finished, he gestured toward the couch. As she walked over and sat, he started in with his questions just like the day before: "Are you ready to talk about what happened at your camp? Your war against the grounders?"

"What would you like to know?"

"Let's start with _why_ you antagonized them."

"We didn't," Clarke said simply. "We thought the ground was uninhabited, but on the very first day one of our people was speared through the chest. Every decision we made was in response to that. They attacked us first."

Eusebius pulled gently on his trim beard, his emerald ring catching the light. "Clarke, the grounders didn't attack Jasper."

"Then who…"

"The people you call 'grounders' did nothing but patiently observe the situation… Right up until the point when _Bellamy Blake_ led a raiding party deep into their territory. And then Mr. Blake kidnapped and _tortured_ one of their warriors. With _your_ consent, I believe?"

"Finn would have died."

"So you believe that Blake's actions were justified."

"I loved Finn. He did everything he could to make peace with the grounders, even after Lincoln tried to kill him."

"So then what went wrong?"

"In the end, we couldn't trust them. We did what we had to do to survive."

"And where are Blake and Collins now?"

_You know damn well where they are_, Clarke thought, looking away and crossing her arms across her chest. He knew about _everything_, somehow. Eusebius said nothing else, just waited. When she looked back, he was staring at her benignly. Finally she said, "They're dead." It came out in a rasp. She was practically choking on the words.

"How did they die?"

"In the fire. We had to leave them out there."

Eusebius made a sympathetic face, giving her a moment while she blinked back the tears that threatened to fall from her eyes. If he already knew the answers to all of these questions, why was he asking her? Just to make her miserable?

"Has it not occurred to you, Clarke, that you and your people might be the _villains_ of this story?"

Clarke shook her head. "I can accept that maybe we made some bad decisions along the way, but we _honestly_ believed we were acting in self-defense."

"Clarke, dear," he said sadly, tilting his head to the side, "I understand. It's very hard for a young girl to take on such a large responsibility. And with a vicious assassin like Bellamy Blake manipulating you… None of these decisions were really _yours_, were they? It was _him_."

She worked hard to maintain control of her expression. If Eusebius thought she was going to buy into this perspective, he had another think coming. Clarke could still see Bellamy's haunted face as she pleaded with him to come with her. They always had a way of communicating everything without saying a word. And she knew exactly what his eyes would say to her now: _He wants to break you down, Princess, until you doubt everything about yourself. And then he'll rebuild you to believe in his bullshit._

"No, you're wrong. Bellamy and I shared the responsibility of leading together. We were partners."

"Don't you see how he's controlling you?" Eusebius asked, sitting forward in his chair. His voice was hushed and incredulous. "Even from beyond the grave, he leads you astray."

With a sniffle, she hugged her knees to her chest and forced herself to play along. Let him think it's working. "I don't understand…"

"You say you were in love with Finn Collins but you sided with Blake _against_ him. And what happened? The conflict escalated and now the boy you loved is dead. You killed him. You killed so many of your own people."

Clarke let herself cry now. Eusebius fell quiet, but she saw a triumphant gleam in his eyes. How long was she going to have to withstand this emotional assault? Were they doing this to Monty and Jasper and Raven? What else could she do but hope that they would buy her act and let her out of this room? What if she had to pretend for so long that she started to believe the lie?

**Abby**

The lake wasn't exactly easy to pick out on the map. Abby had been pacing around the shore since dawn, trying to ascertain the general shape of the lake, but it didn't seem to match anything in the vicinity of Mount Weather.

"The terrain is different now," a male voice said behind her. Turning, Abby saw it was Wick, Sinclair's apprentice from engineering. He walked towards her and held his hand out to take the map. When she seemed reluctant to share, he explained, "Jaha wanted somebody to help you, so Sinclair sent me."

"What did Kane say?"

"He doesn't know." Wick flashed her a devilish grin.

Abby raised her eyebrows. She thought that he and Kane were great friends after they had worked together to gather the survivors of the Exodus Ship disaster. But then again, that didn't mean they had to come down on the same side of every issue.

"See this river here?" Wick traced his finger along a blue line that twisted back and forth through the mountains just to the west of Mount Weather. "I think we're somewhere right along here. Looks like there was a landslide down that way and the river just got backed up."

Now she could see it. The arrangement of mountains around the basin started matching up with what she was seeing on the map. "So we're not that far at all."

"Nope. If someone were to leave early enough, before most of the camp woke up…"

They moved fast, swiping a few basic supplies from the camp and disappearing into the trees before anyone knew they were gone. Wick charted a course for them that gave Mount Weather itself a wide berth.

"Wouldn't it be faster to cut closer to it?" Abby asked him.

Wick looked uncomfortable and lowered his voice when he responded: "There's something going on with that. Jaha found a signal coming from Mount Weather."

"But that's good, isn't it?"

"Sinclair says whoever's in there… They're working against us, blocking our transmissions. The current theory is that it might be that fucking bitch, Councilor Sydney and her people."

Abby cast him a sidelong glance and he instantly regretted his language. As he winced and prepared to make an apology, she gave him a chuckle and a little punch to the arm. "Come on, Wick. You don't have to treat me like I'm some stuffy old lady. You're right: Sydney is a _fucking bitch_."

Their laughter and the crunching of their feet through the carpet of dead leaves seemed so loud in the quiet woods. Every now and then, a cold wind blew through the valley, ripping the last of the red and orange leaves from the trees. Abby tried to imagine how it would all look come springtime when everything started to bloom, but this was beautiful too, in its way.

As their hike wore on into the afternoon, Abby felt a creeping dread deep in her chest. It was hard to put her finger on exactly what was wrong, but it was something in the way the quiet was _too_ quiet. And then there was the occasional scent of burning that wafted to them on the breeze. Wick insisted that it smelled like rocket fuel, but what did that mean?

It wasn't until the sun started to set behind them, bathing the tree trunks in a golden glow, that Abby saw her first animal. She knew from what the kids had reported that she should expect to see mutations, but this was something else: a red fox with eight legs. It darted out from the bushes and passed directly across their path, its limbs moving in a coordinated, undulating pattern that made both Abby and Wick stop dead in their tracks.

"The _fuck_ is that?" the younger man screeched as Abby let out a horrified yelp.

It was gone as quickly as it had appeared, but they stayed still and quiet for a long moment afterward. Drawing ragged breaths, Abby realized she was rubbing her fingers against her collarbone nervously. Wick reached out and put a heavy, comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Well, that was a fucking nightmare…" he said.

They were just about to start off again when a horrible moan drifted to them from somewhere up ahead in the trees. It almost didn't sound human, but Abby was sure she heard the words "help me." She locked eyes with Wick for a split second before they rushed forward towards the sound. _Maybe we should have brought a gun_, she thought.

Beyond the next little hill, they found a person propped up against a tree trunk, shivering, and half buried in leaves. There was dark, dried blood everywhere. Abby dropped to her knees at his side and immediately started identifying his wounds. It was a teenage boy who had been beaten savagely about the head and stabbed in the thigh. He was hopelessly filthy, his long hair twisting into thick, mud-encrusted chunks.

Abby was checking his vitals as Wick stood back asking, "Who is he?"

"I don't know," she said, holding the boy's face in her hands and trying to make eye contact with him. "He's lost a lot of blood, but he's still alive. Whoever did this to him must have missed his femoral by millimeters…"

"Murphy…" the boy spluttered.

"What?"

"John Murphy."

Suddenly Abby recognized him. He was swollen and smeared in blood and dirt, but his strange, alien features were etched in her memory. She had stared at his face for hours that first day when the kids landed on Earth, scanning over his data, trying to figure out how he had died. Turns out he wasn't dead at all.

"John, what happened to you?" she asked, wiping at his split open cheekbone with a cloth she had pulled out of her backpack.

"Grounders…"

"Where are the others, John? Where are the other kids?"

His eyes rolled in their sockets as he stared up into her face. She thought he might faint before giving her an answer, but finally he croaked out the words: "Dead. They're all dead."


	4. Chapter 4

**Abby**

Maybe the hardest part of being a doctor, Abby was realizing, is that when it's _your_ world that's collapsing, you still have to keep doing your job.

This poor kid, John Murphy, didn't know he'd just ripped out her heart. He was close to hypovolemic shock, but there was nothing she could do for him here besides give him water and keep him warm. They'd have to get him back to camp right away.

But Abby couldn't move.

"Water," she said.

Wick, now crouching by her side and chewing on his lip nervously, handed her his canteen. "What do we do now?"

"We have to carry him."

"Are you sure you don't want to go get help?"

"No!" Abby snapped at him, but then took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. "If he dies from exposure we'll never find out what happened."

"Bellamy Blake…" the boy croaked.

"What?"

"Sold us out," he paused to take a swig of water. "Betrayed us to the Grounders."

"The guard who shot Jaha," Abby said, turning to Wick with angry tears in her eyes. Of course that's what happened. _This is what you get when you entrust your only daughter to a pack of wild animals._ "John, where is he now? Is Blake still alive?"

John Murphy's eyelids drooped and his head lolled back. He was almost smiling, but that couldn't be right. Nobody could be in that much physical pain and still smile. She must have imagined it in her tormented state. Everything was turning so sinister so quickly: the failing light, the hissing of the wind, the bare tree branches rattling against each other like old bones.

"Abby," Wick's hand closed around her shoulder, "we need to get going now if we don't want to spend the night in the woods."

Together they fashioned a stretcher from a blanket, hefted the boy onto it, and took off in the direction they had come from. John Murphy was heavy, but Abby was going numb to the pain in her shoulders and back. The stabbing in her heart drowned everything else out. Staring into the sunset as they marched, she let her mind go blank. Wick was kind enough to just leave her alone.

It was the middle of the night by the time they made it back to the camp in the valley. Delirious with exhaustion, Abby and Wick almost dropped the kid on the ground as soon as the guards on night duty rushed out to meet them. Kane was there with them, anxiously grabbing at Abby's elbow and trying to force her to look at him.

"Abby, where the hell have you been?"

"We went after the kids," she said, shaking her head and trying to pull away from him so she could finally sit down. Kane shot an irritated glance over at Wick, but he stayed with Abby, holding her up.

"Abby, I _explicitly_ told you not to…"

"They're all dead. Clarke is dead."

Kane's whole demeanor changed. He winced, baring his teeth, and moved his hands to rub Abby's aching shoulders. After staring into her eyes for an uncomfortable moment, he finally said, "I'm so sorry."

She couldn't stand any longer and slithered out of his grasp, dropping down to the ground next to Wick. Kane sat down with them and waited patiently for one of them to carry on with the story. Abby explained everything to him shakily, staring at the fallen leaves under her hands, not quite ready to meet Kane's intense stare.

"Did you see anyone else out there? Did you find their camp?" Kane asked.

Shaking her head, Abby gestured over to the medical tent where the guards had taken the boy. "Just the one. We need to keep him alive. We need to find out everything he knows."

He nodded, "We'll send a search party in the morning. If Blake is out there, we are going to find him. But right now, you need to get some rest."

"Clarke _defended_ him," Abby said as he guided her to her tent. "She asked Jaha to pardon him!"

Thelonious had played her the video afterwards just so she could spend a little more time looking at her daughter's face. She remembered it so clearly: Clarke putting her hand on the traitor's arm. The way they looked at each other, Abby could see she trusted him. What was she thinking? Was Clarke really that naïve? That idealistic?

"We'll get him, Abby," Kane whispered.

**Bellamy**

Bellamy's feet were heavy like blocks of ice. Every step he took against the frozen ground reverberated up from his soles and through his bones, stinging in his ribcage. He couldn't breathe deeply enough and that just made him cough, which made his ribs hurt, which made it even harder to breath deeply…

"I think you might have pneumonia," Lincoln told him as they sat around the campfire at the end of their fourth day of walking.

"Oh, good," Bellamy said without looking up from his book.

Octavia frowned, nudging him with her shoulder and trying to make eye contact. "Bell, come on," she whispered, "will you please take it easy? Maybe tomorrow you should ride with me and Jeremy."

"Who the hell is Jeremy?"

"The _horse_, Bell. Where are you?"

"You named it _Jeremy?_"

Finn leaned forward and poked at the fire with a stick. "She was gonna name it Bellamy, but Lincoln talked her out of it. I hear you used to give some pretty great pony rides in your day."

"Yeah, yeah…" Bellamy rolled his eyes as Octavia giggled. There was a weird sense of comfort settling into their little group. While he wouldn't say they were all _friends_, exactly, they were getting to know each other in ways that he would have never expected before they started this trip.

Sure, they were always talking about food and staying warm. But in between discussions of the blisters on their feet and how many miles they had traveled, they told each other stories about themselves. It wasn't long before they all knew about how Bellamy had gotten Octavia arrested, how Lincoln killed his first Reaper when he was twelve, and how Finn had pulled off his infamous spacewalk.

Bellamy was beginning to see how the past had made these people who they were now. When Finn's parents were killed in the political uprising a few years back, it had turned him bitter and reckless, but also solidified his commitment to nonviolence. And Lincoln had grown up feeling trapped in a society that only valued physical strength, which went some way to explaining his obsession with Luna's clan.

They spent a lot of time talking about the people who lived by the ocean. They were different, Lincoln insisted. Different in a way that he hadn't known was even possible until the first time he saw them. They came to his village to trade. He had been seven years old at the time and he fell completely in love with them. They weren't afraid of anything. They laughed all the time. Every few years they came back and finally Luna gave Lincoln a map, telling him to come see her if he ever needed to escape.

"So you've never actually _been_ there?" Bellamy had asked.

"No. Never."

It kept Bellamy up at night. He wanted to believe Lincoln and trust that the ocean clan would welcome them, but the closer they got, the more he worried.

On the fifth day, he rode with Octavia. The pine trees started to thin out and gradually the forest became a plane of tall, dried out reeds. Bellamy could smell the salt in the air. Strange, noisy birds swooped through the overcast sky.

In the afternoon, they came across a dormant cornfield and skirted around the perimeter, trying to find the road Lincoln insisted must be nearby. From his vantage point atop Jeremy, Bellamy spotted a small figure waiting for them among the dead, jagged corn stalks.

"Whoa…" he said, patting Octavia on the arm. She pulled back on the reigns and they slowed to a stop.

"What is it?" Finn asked as he and Lincoln came up beside them.

"It's a kid."

The little boy stepped out of the field into their path. He was still far away enough that they could only see that he was very young, not yet ten, and wearing a heavy khaki-colored coat. Lincoln walked a few paces toward the kid and held out his palm in a series of slow, deliberate hand signals. The boy apparently knew exactly what that meant and took off running into the field without a word.

"Alright," Lincoln said. "Now they know we're coming. Let's go."

They kept going until they found the road that cut through the cornfield and turned east. Finally, they came up over the crest of a hill and there it was: the Atlantic Ocean. It was still a ways off and they paused on the hill to stare at it, not speaking for a long time.

Bellamy felt all of the tension melt out of his body as he rested his cheek on the top of Octavia's head. The ocean brought back a feeling he used to get all the time on the Ark whenever he looked out the windows into space. It was particularly potent when he got the chance to watch a cosmic event like a comet passing or a syzygy. The feeling was a kind of pleasant, dizzying smallness, like a reminder that his whole life and all of his problems were insignificant if the vast face of time and space. It was reassuring, somehow.

"I wish they were all here to see this," he said against his sister's hair.

"Yeah…" Octavia sighed.

It wasn't until they started down the hill that Bellamy became consciously aware of the village laying between them and the ocean. It was hard to tell from a distance, but as they came closer he could see that there had been a flood. Wooden buildings slumped to the ground at weird angles, some seeming to dissolve into the large areas of standing water that dotted the landscape. But there were some cabins still standing and a bunch of tents set up on higher ground.

_The hurricane_, Bellamy realized. A hundred and twenty miles inland, the winds had been strong enough to puncture the side of the drop ship with the branches of a fallen tree. How much worse would it have been here?

**Thelonious**

"Abby, are you there?"

"Hmm…"

Lifting his head up from his folded arms, Thelonious reached out and pressed a button on the console, skipping to the next song. She needed something more upbeat. Hell, _he_ needed something more upbeat.

"How are you feeling?"

She drew a long, rasping breath and exhaled in a sigh. He could visualize her sitting on the floor of the space station with her head in her hands. When she finally spoke, she sounded muffled. "Not great, Thelonious."

"Sinclair said they sent out more scouts today," he said and immediately regretted it. The search party had returned the day before reporting that they found the kids' drop ship sitting in a pile of bones and ashes. The inside had already been cleaned out. No equipment, no clues, no personal items. Talking about it now was as good as pouring salt on Abby's open wound. He tried something else: "And I hear they finished building your clinic."

"How's the shuttle coming?"

"Oh! It's going well." Thelonious perked up a little. "I'm actually pretty proud of myself. The hardest part turned out to be moving it to the hangar. That thing weighs probably three tons. We ended up having to turn off the gravity for all of Go-Sci. It was such a mess…"

What was that sound she was making? Crying? _No,_ _she's laughing_, he realized. Thelonious sat up and grinned at the empty room, desperately wishing he could see her face. "What? Why is that funny to you?"

"I'm imagining you in zero-g, trying to maneuver some enormous hunk of metal down the hallway… probably listening to Mozart or some shit the whole time."

"It was Stravinsky, actually…"

She cut him off with an even louder burst of laughter. "You have centuries of music at your fingertips and absolutely no sense of adventure!"

"And what would _you _have chosen?"

"I don't know. Something modern. Something electronic." He could hear in her voice that her mood was already sinking back down to the same basement level it had been at for the last few days. "Clarke loved the music archives. I wish I could remember the name of that one song she used to sing with Wells when they were little…"

"Yellow Submarine."

"Yeah," she sniffed. She was crying again. Thelonious grimaced, recognizing the mood swings from his own battle with grief. What a soul-crushing rollercoaster they'd been going through. First the kids are alive, then they're dead. Then alive. Then dead. Permanently, painfully dead.

"So when are you gonna come down here?" she asked, suddenly pulling herself together.

"Soon. The systems checks all cleared. I've got it charging up right now."

He hesitated for a moment, not sure if he should say the thing he wanted to say next. She had enough to worry about without him piling on more. But if he didn't start saying these things soon…

"I might not be able to talk to you again between now and the launch, actually," he said slowly. "There are some considerations. Conserving power, obviously, but then there's the interference."

"From Mount Weather?"

"I don't want to be broadcasting my every move to anyone who might be listening."

"No, of course not."

"So…" he drew a deep breath, "this might be it, Abby."

"Don't say that."

He felt his chest tightening as he tried to hold back all the things he wanted to say. What would she feel if he told her now? Would she think of Jake and his involvement in that tragedy? Would she think of how he had pardoned Bellamy Blake? Would she blame him for what happened to Clarke? He didn't think he could take it if the last words she might ever speak to him were hurt or angry. What if his last conversation with her made her misery even deeper than it already was?

But then again, what if she never knew that he loved her?

"Abby, I need to tell you something." He waited for a moment, but she said nothing. "I… For a long time now…"

"Thelonious," she cut him off firmly, but there was warmth in her voice. "I know."

His brain short-circuited, thinking a million things and nothing all at the same time. Memories of her flashed before his eyes: Abby wrinkling her nose over a game of chess, Abby yelling at him from across the Council table, Abby grinning triumphantly as she came out of the operating room. Abby, Abby, Abby…

"Will you play me another song, Thelonious?"

"Sure," he said and scrolled through the archive, looking for something that she would love to hear. Something adventurous.

**Clarke**

By the fifth day, Clarke wasn't even trying to communicate with Monty anymore. She didn't know if their security cameras could see the letters they wrote on the windows, so she had to keep up the act. At first, she wrote to him about how sorry she was to have let them all down. Later, when she started working in comments about sin and wickedness, Monty was clearly confused so she left him alone.

It was a good sign, she told herself. Monty was still Monty.

Eusebius came like clockwork every morning, not long after the musical wake-up ritual, carrying her broth breakfast. But on this particular morning, he also brought her old clothes in a bundle under his arm.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"I know this has been really hard on you, confronting your failures so bravely," he said. "I really shouldn't be doing this, but I like you, Clarke. I want to help you."

Her heart was racing as she tried to keep her emotions steady. Eusebius had spent the last three days relentlessly questioning her about her mother, Bellamy, Charlotte, Wells – anything that he could use to make her feel miserable about herself. This "help" he was offering was probably some mind game just like everything else. Just the day before, she had pretended to have a nervous breakdown. It wasn't actually too far away from how she was really feeling.

"Are we going somewhere?"

"You can get changed behind the curtain and then you'll find out."

When she came out a few minutes later, Eusebius was standing by the open door with a grin on his face. He gestured with his hand as if to say "After you."

Clarke hesitated, considering for a quick second that maybe this was her chance. The glass shard called to her from the back of the drawer. _No, too soon_, she thought. She had no idea what was out there. And she didn't even have shoes. Sure, killing Eusebius would feel amazing, but then what?

She brushed past him into the hallway. Monty watched from his window, shock and worry all over his face. Clarke gave him a little smile and a nod before Eusebius put his hand on her shoulder and steered her away.

Traveling down the hall, Clarke craned her neck trying to look inside each round window they passed. Some of the rooms seemed empty, but plenty of them were occupied by people she recognized: Tim Bartlett, Masayo Takada, Olivier Grand…

They stopped in front of an elevator and Eusebius pressed the button. While they waited, a sharp banging started up behind them. Eusebius ignored it, but Clarke turned around. It was Anya, pounding against the reinforced glass, her shouts inaudible. Clarke opened her mouth to say something, but then the elevator arrived and they stepped inside.

Eusebius turned a key on the control panel and pressed a button labeled B1. Clarke quickly scanned for clues. The top of the brass panel was engraved with some kind of official seal and the title "Mount Weather Hospital." There were three buttons with the numbers counting downwards, a small plaque that read "Quarantine" next to the lowest B3 button. _Definitely underground_, she thought.

The doors opened on a brightly lit, but mostly deserted medical ward. Near the nurses' station, a woman in an olive green jumpsuit stood with her back to them, mopping the floor. She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of the elevator and Clarke caught a glimpse of her face. _Mary?_ No, it couldn't be. This lady was a lot older than the one she met on the first day.

"This way please, Clarke," Eusebius said, touching her shoulder and indicating an area enclosed by pale blue curtains.

Clarke slipped inside and there was Raven, lying on her side, looking pale and exhausted in a thin paper gown. One of her arms was extended on the bed, chaining her to an IV pole. Electrodes were taped all over her head and chest and she was fitted with a nasal cannula, but she was alive and awake and she gave a weak grin when she saw Clarke enter.

"Raven!" Clarke breathed, kneeling at her bedside and grabbing onto her hand.

"Hey, Clarke," her eyes flicked over to an elderly man in a white coat standing off to the side "Have you met my hero, Dr. Lipton?"

"Uh…no," Clarke said, nodding to him. "Thank you…"

"Oh, I didn't do much," he said with a warm, gravelly voice. "She's a real fighter. I'll give you two a bit of privacy."

_Right_, Clarke thought skeptically as he ducked out, noting the black dome of a security camera embedded in the ceiling above them. She could still sense Eusebius's presence waiting just on the other side of the curtain. She would have to be very careful here, even though her whole soul screamed out for her to tell Raven everything.

"How are you feeling?"

"Well, they tell me I had eighteen hours of surgery and a blood transfusion. Then I slept for like two whole days or something." Raven twisted her face into a scowl. "And as soon as I woke up, they got all up in my ass with these questions."

"Yeah. That's… what they do."

"I mean, Dr. Lipton's cool, but _fuck_ these other guys. Seriously." Her beautiful eyes darkened as she lowered her voice. "They say I killed a bunch of people, Clarke. They say I killed _Finn_."

Clarke stared back at her helplessly and watched as her expression melted into tears. She suddenly felt uncontrollably angry. Raven – the strongest, most fearless girl Clarke had ever known – had been turned into a sobbing mess by these people.

"It wasn't your fault," Clarke said, smoothing a lock of hair back from Raven's wet face. "It was me. I had to close the drop ship while he was still outside. They… they've been helping me to accept it."

Raven sniffled and narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean? _Helping_ you…"

"I see now," Clarke's voice was shaking, "that I've committed horrible sins. Everything that happened to us here on the ground is my fault. But they can save us…"

"Clarke!" Raven tried to sit up, wincing. "What the fuck are you saying? These bozos aren't saving _shit_. They're trying to brainwash us!"

"Blessed are they which are called unto the Lamb's supper."

"_What?_"

Raven was shouting and Clarke's vision went blurry with hot tears. She felt someone grab her from behind and pull her away as Raven called after her. Clarke could still hear Raven's words ringing in her ears when she was thrown back into her white room.

_Clarke! Don't listen to them! You have to get us out of here! Clarke!_


	5. Chapter 5

**Bellamy**

The sun was setting. They sat waiting on a large piece of driftwood while Lincoln was led into a tent to speak with Luna. None of the villagers seemed to notice or care that there were strangers in their midst, being too busy working, clearing debris and rebuilding homes. Only a big black dog paid them any attention. It came up and smelled each one of them in turn, licking Octavia's face and letting Bellamy scratch behind its ears.

"Man, I really like it here," Finn said, looking out towards the water. "No guns, no panic, nobody yelling at anybody…"

Bellamy groaned, recognizing that Finn meant to be critical of him and his leadership. "They're vulnerable here. They can't even defend themselves against the weather."

"You can't kill a hurricane, Bellamy."

"Cute," he said as the dog nuzzled into the palm of his hand. "It's like they don't even think they're in any danger here."

"Maybe they're _not_ in danger. Why does peace make you so uncomfortable?"

Just when Bellamy opened his mouth to respond, Lincoln came out of the tent with three people: a thin, brown-skinned woman in her fifties, a redheaded man with a grizzled beard, and a young woman with auburn hair and brown eyes. As soon as they stepped out, the black dog turned and ran to them.

"Hello!" the woman said to Bellamy's group as they stood. "Welcome to the beach. I'm Luna Lee. This my husband, Bodie, and our youngest, Sunny."

There was a round of hand shaking and introductions. Then Luna put her hand on her daughter's shoulder and said, "I'll bet you all are starving. Sunny, why don't you take them over to the longhouse and get them situated."

As they turned to follow Sunny, Luna reached out and held Bellamy by the elbow. "Come sit with us for a minute, Sweetheart," she said, nodding at the tent.

The inside of the tent reminded Bellamy of a luxury version of their camp back at the drop ship. There were fur rugs and large cushions made of woven reeds arranged in a circle. At the center was a small fire pit, keeping the area warm and well lit. The smoke drifted up and out through an opening at the tent's apex.

Luna directed Bellamy to sit on one of the cushions at the back and she and Bodie sat on either side of him. From under a small wooden table, she produced three clay cups and a hand-blown glass bottle filled with amber liquid. She poured each of them a shot.

"Cheers," Bodie said and they drank. The moonshine burned through Bellamy's sore throat, kick starting a small coughing fit. Luna patted him lightly between his shoulder blades and waited for him to catch his breath.

"So. Lincoln tells me you're the king of the delinquents from outer space." She paused and gave Bellamy an amused look before continuing. "The Mountain Men captured your queen and all your little pawns, so you came to us for help."

"She's really more of a princess…"

"Sweetheart," she ignored his interjection, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you're in checkmate."

"What do you mean?" he asked, considering that she might be giving him too much credit by comparing this situation to a chess game.

Luna shifted on her cushion, sitting forward to drape her forearms over her knees. "Taking on Mount Weather is… a _challenge_, let's say. Believe me when I tell you that I'd love to see those sons of bitches get what's coming to them, but the _timing_…" She shot a look over at her husband, who let out a heavy sigh. "That hurricane fucked us right over. Winter is here and I've got a couple thousand people who need to come in from the cold. We need to be rebuilding as fast as we can, not sending folks out on a suicide mission."

"Maybe if you just had some maps or intel on Mount Weather we could take a look at…"

"So the four of you can go storm the castle on your own?" Luna asked with a snort. "Sweetheart, it's gonna take more than that."

"We didn't come all this way just to give up," Bellamy rasped. "Those kids are my responsibility. I've already lost too many of them."

"And if you go after them, you will lose _yourself_."

He shrugged, clenching his jaw and keeping his eyes locked with hers. She leaned forward and picked up the bottle, pouring out three more shots of moonshine. They knocked their drinks back silently and then Bodie cleared his throat and said, "You're worn down, Bellamy. Your sister's got a wicked limp and the other kid's burnt arm is starting to fester. Can you at least stay here for tomorrow? Let the doc see you? Get a little rest?"

Bellamy took a second to get his thoughts organized, staring into the fire. "I… I know that I'm asking a lot from you and you've been patient and generous… I need to ask for one more thing."

"Go ahead, Sweetheart."

"My sister," he said, his voice catching in his throat. "Octavia. Will you promise me that when Finn and I leave tomorrow, you'll take care of her here?"

Luna held out her hand to him and they shook on it, her black eyes shining. "I have an older brother," she said. "Two sisters, three daughters, two sons, and seven grandchildren. Family is the most important thing in this world. You have my word. We will protect Octavia."

They walked Bellamy up to the stone longhouse and said goodnight. Inside, he found Octavia, Finn, and Lincoln greedily eating bread and fish with a few dozen of the villagers. The mood of the place was jolly. Torches and candles were everywhere, mosaics made of seashells glittered on the walls. Luna's daughter Sunny sat nearby, singing along with a dark woman who played an old guitar.

"Bell!" Octavia waived him over as soon as she saw him standing in the doorway. "It's bread! Fucking _bread_! Can you believe it?"

He sat down between her and Lincoln and snatched a roll from a platter in the middle of the table. "Holy shit, I am so hungry."

"Bell, what happened? What did they say?"

Finn and Lincoln gave him concerned looks, but said nothing. Octavia scanned his expression with serious eyes. Bellamy forced himself to smile. "Let's talk about the serious stuff in the morning. Tonight, we eat."

He sat with them for a while, then excused himself and walked down towards the beach alone. On his way, he passed by Luna's tent. He could hear the couple shouting at each other inside. Glancing back over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't being watched, Bellamy sidled up to the tent and listened for a quick second.

"…But how do you _know_?" Bodie was saying.

"Because this is the way it's been for a hundred years!"

"And that means they couldn't just up and change their minds? A bunch of people fall from space and you think everything's just gonna be the _same_?"

"Why not?"

"It's _already_ changing! They're here! We are already involved."

Hearing laughter somewhere behind him, Bellamy took off along his way before he got caught eavesdropping. He jogged down to the water, his heart pounding, and looked up into the starry sky. _I could just walk into the ocean right now and never come back_, he thought. Maybe it would be peaceful.

**Clarke**

She was lying on her back on the bed, staring at the painting from upside down, when Eusebius came in. He placed something small and heavy on her stomach and she sat up to see what it was.

Clarke gasped. She glanced up at his face, just to make sure this was really happening. It was her father's watch. Eusebius nodded with a reassuring smile. While she fastened it around her wrist, he went to sit in his usual spot in the white armchair.

"How do you feel about what happened yesterday?" he asked.

"I'm worried about Raven."

"Oh?" He tilted his head to the side and waited for her to elaborate.

"If any man shall diminish the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy City, and from those things which are written in this book." Clarke recited the words from the little booklet, fidgeting with the watch and giving Eusebius her most pained expression. "If Raven doesn't believe, then will that happen to her?"

Eusebius nodded pensively. "It's a very real worry, Clarke. It's good of you to be concerned for her."

"Isn't there anything I can do to help her?"

"That's what I wanted to speak with you about, dear," he said. "You've shown so much spiritual growth in such a short time, I think you're ready to move out of quarantine. We'd like to give you the opportunity to formally join our brotherhood. We're hoping that your excellent example will inspire your friends. What do you say to that?"

_Ha! _Clarke thought. Out of quarantine. Her plan was working. Clarke let her excitement show on her face, hoping Eusebius would take it for religious fervor. "When can we start?"

"Excellent. We start right away!" He grinned and stood up, opening the door to let Mary inside.

Or at least she _thought_ it was Mary. Mary had been quite a bit younger than the lady who was walking into Clarke's room carrying a pile of clothes and a pair of boots. But other than the apparent age difference, their faces were exactly the same. _I must be misremembering her_, Clarke told herself as she took the bundle of clothes.

"I'll be out here in the hallway when you're dressed," Eusebius said before leaving the two women alone in the room.

"It's nice to see you, Mary," Clarke said, closely watching the woman's face.

"It's nice to see you too, Miss Clarke."

_Definitely the same person. I am going crazy._

She stepped behind the curtain and started to change. These weren't her old clothes that she had been wearing when she came down from the Ark. This was a navy blue sweater and a pair of olive green pants with utility pockets. The boots were new as well: heavy and black with reinforced toes.

"You look beautiful, Miss Clarke," Mary said when she was ready.

"I feel like a man." Clarke wrinkled her nose.

As Mary moved to open the door, Clarke held up a hand to stop her. "Wait! Is it okay if I bring the Book of Revelation with me? I got kinda attached to it…"

Mary smiled. "Of course."

Clarke walked to the drawer by the bed and reached inside. Sure enough, the shard of glass was sitting just where she left. She sandwiched it in between the pages of the book and then quickly stuffed it into one of the big pockets of her new pants.

"Okay, let's go."

Eusebius escorted them down the hall to the elevator and back up to level B1. Without passing Raven's bed, they went through the hospital, down a tunnel and out into some kind of underground concourse.

As they walked, Eusebius explained, "We think it will be best to ease you into our society. Some of your friends have already made their debuts. They can help you get acclimated."

Finally they pushed through a set of double doors into what looked like a rec room. There were a couple of pool tables in the back, a ping-pong table, and some arcade games off to the side. The walls were covered in fake wood paneling and there were fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

And then her eyes settled on Jasper playing cards at a round table with a girl that Clarke had never seen before. She took off towards them, leaving Eusebius and Mary behind without a word.

"Jasper!" she shouted, laughing with almost crazed relief. He looked up just in time to catch her as she threw herself into his arms. "Oh my God, Jasper!"

"Heeeey, Clarke!" He gave her a warm squeeze. "How's it going?"

She sat down in the empty chair next to him and looked him over. They had given him new clothes too, but the severe military style suited him a little bit better. And he still had his goggles somehow.

"How are _you_ doing, Jasper?" Clarke asked, narrowing her eyes at him meaningfully.

"I'm doing great! I love it here!"

"…Really?"

"Yeah," he said. "I know it sounds weird, but I kinda like being in confined spaces again. Reminds me of home."

Clarke's smile froze onto her face unnaturally as she felt her heart sinking like a rock. He was too happy, too sincere. The feeling only got worse as he kept talking, oblivious to her distress.

"And I making new friends! This is Avital," he gestured to the girl sitting on his other side. "She helped me understand what's really been going on with me."

"What's been going on?"

"I was speared through the _chest_, Clarke." Jasper gripped her hand. "And nothing was the same after. I was so freaked out, like, _all_ of the time. I didn't feel like I was _me_ anymore. Something was missing. And you know what?"

"What…"

"I _did_ die," he whispered, leaning forward and raising his eyebrows for emphasis. "All this time, I _wasn't_ me. But Avital saved me. This_ place_ saved me. I'm resurrected. It's a _miracle_."

Clarke glanced away from Jasper's ecstatic face to look at his companion. Avital smiled back at her sweetly, reaching up with one hand to smooth down a tuft of Jasper's hair. _Oh Jasper, _Clarke sighed internally, noting the girl's porcelain skin and bright blue eyes. They knew exactly what buttons to push, didn't they?

"You feel it too, don't you Clarke? The cleansing? The forgiveness?"

"Yes. I know exactly what you mean."

**Abby**

"It's snowing!" Anita said, ducking under the curtain on her way into the clinic. There were white flakes stuck in her black hair, on her eyelashes, and on the logs of firewood she carried in her arms. Abby turned and held her finger up to her lips, gesturing toward Murphy where he slept on a cot at the back of the room.

Anita mouthed "sorry," and knelt to carefully stack the logs up against the wall next to the makeshift stove. She smiled up at Jackson who was there sterilizing instruments in boiling water. "You should really go out there and see it," she said under her breath.

The three of them had been cooped up, taking shifts in the single room of the clinic ever since John Murphy arrived. He had to be watched at all times. At first, the blood pressure in his leg had Abby worried about compartment syndrome and an eventual amputation, but now the real problem was infection. The wound was oozing and the kid was feverish.

Abby and Kane had asked Murphy a thousand questions by now. Where was the Grounder village? How many were there? Did anyone ever make it to Mount Weather? Had anyone seen Diana Sydney? Apparently he had been captured by the Grounders weeks ago and was tortured so badly he remembered almost nothing. The only thing he would say with any confidence was that Bellamy Blake had shown up at the Grounder village and offered up the delinquents to them if they would accept him into their clan.

"How did you end up in the woods by yourself?" Kane must have asked him at least ten times.

"I don't know, I don't know," the boy said. "They stabbed me and left me there."

Kane had given Abby one of his looks and she knew that meant he didn't believe Murphy's story. But they didn't have anything else to go on besides his words and the bodies burned beyond recognition at the kids' camp. Abby was afraid to let herself believe that maybe somehow it wasn't what it looked like. She had gotten her hopes up so many times over the last month and things just kept going wrong…

She went outside and leaned against the doorframe, watching the snow slowly cover over everything. Their camp was starting to look like a frontier town, the kind she had seen and read about in history books. Little wooden buildings were popping up in between the parachute tents and scrap metal shacks. A kind of main street was forming down the center of the valley as people traveled back and forth between Tesla Station on the hill and Mecha Station down in the lake.

Through the falling snow, Abby spotted Kane walking towards her. As he got closer, she could see that his lip was cut and bleeding down his chin.

"Hey, what happened there?"

"Fist fight," he said, coming to a stop a few paces away from her and squinting into the white haze.

"Come inside. Let me get it stitched up." She stepped forward and went to touch his face, but he pulled back.

"No, no, it's nothing. It's fine."

"Can I get you some water at least?"

"Abby, it's fine," he said irritably. "Look, I came here to talk to you about the civil order situation."

"You kicked me out of the Council, Marcus."

Kane let out a short laugh and folded his arms over his chest. "Council? There's no Council anymore. Mendez, Christiansen, and Sheppard are dead. Park is _missing_, but probably dead. Jaha's lost in space for God knows how long, and Diana Sydney is a _actively sabotaging_ us from Mount Weather."

"Thelonious will be down here any day now."

"That still only makes two people."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Abby, you're the doctor," he said, spreading his arms to gesture at the clinic. "People listen to you. They respect you."

"Not all of them."

He smirked. "Do you want to know what happened to my lip? Mike Santos and that Farrell guy were fighting over a piece of goddamn insulation from Tesla station and I stepped in to break it up like an idiot."

"Did anybody else get hurt?"

"No, that's not my point."

"I think you better get to it, then."

"I'm saying the no tolerance policy is gone. No one is afraid of being floated down here. But now that they know they can get away with anything, it's only a matter of time before fist fights turn into something much worse."

"Thelonious will be here within the week," she said as she looked up at the overcast sky. "You should take this up with him when he gets here."

"What if he doesn't get here?"

"He'll get here."

**Thelonious**

The ventilation systems were starting to fail again. So much of the remaining oxygen and nitrogen supply had to be pumped into the shuttle's canisters. Thelonious knew what would happen next: exhaustion, nausea, that awful pins and needles feeling in his hands and feet. He had less than twenty-four hours left.

"Well," he said to the shuttle, running his hand over a loose ceramic tile, "one way or another, I'll probably be dead by tomorrow. At least this method should be quick."

For days, he had been thinking about what needed to happen right before the end. He had a to-do list, even. Beyond preparing the shuttle, most of it involved deciding exactly what he should pack to bring to the ground. Of course, almost everything truly useful had gone down with the space stations already, but there were still things to think about.

Thelonious had a small, portable hard drive with a good amount of space to hold files from the Ark's master database. He considered that it might be pointless to bring that stuff if there wasn't going to be any way to read the files on the ground. But still, he thought, how could he just abandon thousands of years of human endeavor to space? He had a responsibility to posterity, didn't he? If there was even the slightest chance… maybe if they could get to Mount Weather and unseat Diana or whoever was there…

The first files he copied were his videos and pictures of Wells. Next went the scientific treatises, the encyclopedias, the classic books, the music, the video clips of great historical events, and the epic final of the 2066 World Cup. Then the drive was full. He threaded a long metal ball chain through the eyelet on the end of the device and fastened it around his neck.

His next order of business was to pack hard copies of textbooks into the shuttle. Not too many so that they overloaded the ship, just the Earth Skills and the science and engineering books and the atlas.

Then he went back to his quarters and started jamming personal items into a backpack. There was the little metal dog made of nuts and bolts that Wells had made, a small photo album, and the white knight from the chess set. It was Wells's favorite piece. He took practical items too: a good pocketknife, a few books of matches, and a first aid kit, among other odds and ends.

Even when he got to the end of his list, Thelonious felt that horrible sensation that he must be forgetting something. He checked over the list again then went to the deck to watch his videos of Wells one last time.

Finally he went to the hangar and started kitting himself out in his spacesuit. Through the bay windows he could see the Earth turning below him, a swirl of blue and white. It wouldn't be long before his window for the East Coast of the United States would open. Just some last minute double checks on the systems and then it would be time.

He strapped himself in to the seat and started flipping switches on the control panel, saying the name of each system aloud to himself as he went down the list.

"Booster. Retro. Guidance…"

The screen came on, but it was filled with static. He flipped the switch back and forth to no avail.

"Goddamn it!" he hissed, glancing up through the windshield to see the Earth rotating heedlessly away from him. "Diana Sydney, I swear to God…"

Thelonious shut everything down and popped open the hatch. Taking his helmet off, he sprinted down the hallway back to the deck. Sure enough, the signal from Mount Weather was scrambling every frequency.

"How did she know? How did she _fucking_ know?"

There was nothing to do for it. The only way to launch would be to wait until the Ark's orbit took him out of Mount Weather's range. But where would that put him? In Asia? In the Pacific Ocean? If he waited any more beyond that, there wouldn't be any oxygen left.

"Well, shit." Thelonious sighed. "I guess the universe just wants me to give up."

_No_, he heard Wells's voice say in his head. _Not like this._

"Why not? I sacrificed myself to save my people and now I can finally be with you again. This is a good death."

_No, it's meaningless. You're not doing this to save anyone, you're running away. Who cares if you land on the other side of the planet? You can still live. How many billions of people have died and you just can't wait to throw it all away? _

"It's hard. I miss you."

_I know. That's life. I love you. Keep living._

Tears in his eyes, Thelonious turned on the music and listened to the Beach Boys while he waited for the Ark to float out of range.

_If you should ever leave me, though life would still go on, believe me, the world could show nothing to me, so what good would living do me? _

Hours passed. Then he went back to the hangar and started over.

"All systems are go."

Maybe he would die in the attempt, but he needed to try. It's what Wells would have done.

"Launch."

The hatch opened beneath the shuttle and Thelonious shot into space


	6. Chapter 6

**Thelonious**

The parachute released and the shuttle jerked violently in the air. Thelonious was strapped into his seat tightly enough that he would probably have bruises in the shape of an "x" across his chest by tomorrow.

Now that he was through the clouds and falling slower, he tried to look for landmarks on the ground. He was falling into the mountains somewhere, heading towards a valley. _At least it's not the ocean_, he thought at first. But as he dropped farther, he was starting to get an idea of just how steep the mountains were.

The ground started resolving itself into patches of wintery trees and…. _That can't be right_, he thought. It looked like terraced fields. And there were buildings, he was sure of it. But all of that disappeared over a ridge as he lost altitude and soon the shuttle plunged though the forest canopy to the ground.

Sometime later, he came to with a throbbing ache at the back of his head and a mess of tree branches obscuring the view from the windshield. Nothing was broken and he didn't seem to be bleeding anywhere.

A sudden pounding on the door made Thelonious nearly jump out of his skin. There were people outside: two men with fur hats and heavy lambskin coats. One of them was shouting something, but the words were muffled through the thick glass.

Thelonious popped the hatch and the men stepped back as it swung upward. He barely had time to appreciate the blast of cold, clean air that hit him before they were shouting at him again.

"Nǐ méi shì ba?" The shorter man said repeatedly, looking up at the sky and then back down at Thelonious.

"Oh God, is that Mandarin?" Thelonious asked, eyes wide. "Am I in _fucking_ _China? _Zhōng guó?"

"Zhōng guó," the man nodded then started speaking to him rapidly in Mandarin.

"No, no! I don't understand! I only know a couple of words!"

They stared at each other for a moment and then Thelonious couldn't help himself and cracked up into laughter. Maybe he was having some kind of nervous breakdown or maybe it was just the complete absurdity of it all, but the men were laughing with him too. They held out their hands and helped pull him to his feet, stepping on the surface of the Earth for the first time.

"Wells, you would not believe what's happening to me right now," he said under his breath, turning in a slow circle to take in the landscape. The mountains around them were so strange. Sheer rock faces dripped with frosted foliage and thick, white mist hung low in the foothills.

The taller of the two men put his hand on Thelonious's arm and gestured into the forest. _Come with us_, he knew they meant to say. He held up a finger and ducked back inside, rummaging around for his backpack. As he started trying to jam some of the textbooks into it, the shorter man shook his head, made a pushing motion with his hands as if to say, _No, just leave it_, and pulled him away gently.

"I guess I can come back for it later," Thelonious said, shrugging. He swung the bag onto his back and followed them into the trees.

Maybe it had been a good thing that he was used to thin air on the Ark because the path they traveled took them along precarious ledges high up into the mountains. When they crested the top of the ridge, all of the things Thelonious had seen on his way down reappeared. He hadn't been hallucinating. Below them ancient, crumbling pagodas peeked through the trees and the bottom of the valley was carved into watery terraces that reflected the cloudy gray of the sky.

As they walked down, well-worn walking trails began to appear in the trees and before long they found themselves approaching a cluster of low, brick buildings with sloping tiled roofs. Everything was overgrown with wildlife, but the structures themselves seemed remarkably well preserved. _Maybe the mountains protected all of this from the bombs_, Thelonious thought as they passed under an elaborately carved stone gate.

A small group of people waited for them, standing on the front steps of one of the buildings. The taller of Thelonious's two guides walked briskly ahead to speak with them. Their leader seemed to be an elderly man with a shaved head wearing voluminous beige robes. The group discussed for a few minutes, looking back in Thelonious's direction now and then. Finally they waived him over.

"Huān yíng," the leader said, bowing.

"Uh… nǐ hǎo?" Thelonious bowed in return.

The older man smiled and swept his arm towards the entrance to the building and Thelonious was ushered inside. They sat him down on a bench at a wooden table. A few minutes later, someone came in and handed Thelonious a bowl full of rice, tofu chunks, and chopped up bits of green vegetables covered in soy sauce.

"Thank you so, so much," he said, lifting up the bowl as if he were making a toast and bowing his head to all of them.

As he ate, Thelonious tried to push away the frustrated thoughts that kept popping into his head. _It could be so much worse_, he told himself. So what if he couldn't communicate with them? They were kind and generous. In fact, this could be considered something of a miracle. Any small change in his flight trajectory could have meant a long, slow death in isolation. Even if he was on the wrong continent, this was still a huge step forward from where he had been yesterday.

But part of him refused to stop thinking of Abby and Kane and Sinclair on the other side of the world. How far away was he exactly? Ten thousand miles, at least? _Maybe I should just suck it up and learn Mandarin_, he thought.

**Bellamy**

He woke up early and went down to the water to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic. As the sky turned pink, red, and orange, shining brilliantly against the surface of the water, Bellamy sensed a presence come up behind him.

"You're up early," Bodie said, sitting down next to him. "Not that I blame you."

Bellamy smirked at the older man and then settled his chin to rest on his folded arms. "I couldn't sleep."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the sound of the waves and the gulls overhead. Then Bodie said, "The main thing is you have to get the gate open."

"What?"

"The entrance to Mount Weather. It's the only way in or out. Probably weighs about 30 tons. Concrete poured five feet thick into a steel frame. If you don't have a plan on how to get that bitch open, then you might as well not bother. Never mind their superior numbers and their guns and the acid fog and all those Reapers lurking in the woods…"

Bellamy frowned, not quite sure what was happening. "Do you have any suggestions?"

"Actually, yes." Bodie gave him a smile, reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded packet of papers. The pages crackled as he opened them and pressed them flat over his knee. Looking over Bodie's shoulder, Bellamy saw that they were architectural plans, yellowed with age and marked up with charcoal.

"Where did you get these?"

"Before the last war, my grandfather was the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He brought these with him when our people got run out of Mount Weather ninety years ago."

"No shit…"

"Been sending recon teams up there every couple of years. You know, just in case things ever came to blows with the Mountain Men. We gotta have a contingency plan."

"And you think me and Finn could pull it off?"

"No, we're gonna need a few more. One of you is gonna have to go ahead into the mountain and make way for us."

_We?_ Bellamy thought as he wrapped his head around what Bodie was proposing. "What does Luna think about all this?"

"I love Luna to pieces, but we don't always agree on things," Bodie said with a sigh. "She thinks as long as we stay on our side, they'll stay on theirs. Of course, it would be _nice_ if it worked like that, but there's a _reason_ why we don't all live in the mountain together as one big happy family."

"Bellamy!"

They both turned to see Octavia limping down the hill toward them carrying an orange cat. The animal was twisting uncomfortably in her arms, but her face was beaming. The two men stood up, brushing sand from their pants as she approached.

"I've been looking all over for you, Bell," she said, slightly out of breath. "I found a cat!" Bellamy was tempted to tease her and say it was actually a possum or something but then she sneezed violently and the cat escaped, running off into the tall reeds.

"Gesundheit!" Bodie chuckled. "Did you happen to pass the public baths when you were looking for your brother? You two should get cleaned up before you see the doctor."

"Oh my God, I would _kill_ for a bath," Octavia said, returning his smile.

Bellamy followed behind them as they walked into the village, passing construction sites and skirting around mud puddles. The baths were housed in an elevated stone building. Around the back from the entrance, a man was shoveling hay into a furnace that seemed to connect to the structure's basement.

Octavia skipped up the steps and entered, but before Bellamy could follow her inside, Bodie stopped him with a hand on his arm. The man looked him in the eye and said in a lowered voice, "Take the day to rest up, talk things out with your family, whatever you need to do. I'll put a team together and we can leave first thing tomorrow."

"Thank you." They nodded solemnly to each other and Bellamy went into the building.

Indoors he felt himself warmed to the bones for the first time in weeks. Several large basins divided by curtains were built into the raised floor and steam rose gently from the surface of the water. There were a couple of people already soaking in the tub nearest the door, but his sister wasn't one of them.

"O, where are you?" he called out.

"In the back, Bell."

He went to the basin next door to hers and started stripping down, speaking with her through the curtain. "So I guess you're allergic to cats."

"It was just one sneeze!"

Bellamy laughed. "Be careful with your leg in this water. It looks pretty fucking hot."

"Yeah, yeah," she said, but he heard her hiss quietly as she settled in. "Ah… this is amazing. This whole place is _amazing_."

"How would you feel about living here long-term?" he asked, closing his eyes in bliss as he lowered himself into the water. She stopped splashing around for a moment and Bellamy instantly knew that his question hadn't come off right.

"_After_ we bust everyone out of Mount Weather, right?"

There was a long silence. Bellamy ducked his head under the water and came up again, feeling everything washing out of him. Not just the dirt, but the stress and trauma and physical pain and emotions. _Hard choices_, he reminded himself, _you have to make the hard choices._

"No, I mean…" he paused, not knowing how to phrase it. "You're not coming with us. You're staying here."

"Like _hell_, I am!"

"O, it's too dangerous…"

"Oh, _fuck you_, Bellamy," she said. He could hear the tightness in her throat like she might be crying. "Didn't I just save your life the other day by stabbing a man through the fucking skull? I can do this."

"It's already been decided." He waited for a response, got none, and then tried a different angle. "I thought you might be at least a _little_ bit happy to stay with Lincoln."

"So now you're deciding what Lincoln does with _his_ life, too?"

"No, I just… He's been wanting to move here since he was like seven years old…"

"God, you're so domineering! I'm not listening to any more of this."

There was the sound of splashing and rustling of clothes and Bellamy brain flooded with irrational fears, like always. What if she slipped on the wet tiles because she was hurrying? What if she got sick going outside in the freezing air with her hair still wet?

"I do it because I _love_ you, Octavia!" he shouted, but he heard her boots stomp past on the tile floors and the front door slamming a moment later. With a groan he slipped down into the water and let it cover him completely.

**Clarke**

It wasn't just Jasper who made it out of quarantine before Clarke. Her new roommates in the dormitories were Harper, Shalia, and Kath. They slept on bunk beds in a small, gray cinder block room that reminded Clarke of lock-up on the Ark.

There were no security cameras, but Clarke decided to tread lightly anyway. She went in the middle of the night to crouch on the floor next to Harper's bunk and nudged the girl awake.

"Clarke? What time is it?"

"Shh…" Clarke held a finger up to her lips. "Harper, I need to ask you how you got out of quarantine."

"The white rooms?" Harper asked in a whisper. Clarke nodded. "A couple of days back, they brought Jasper to my room and he told me his soul had been saved or something. And he told me all of this stuff about sinning and the end of the world and I was just like... okay."

"What do you mean, 'okay'?"

"I mean, he asked me if I wanted to be saved and I said 'yeah,' and they let me out."

_That's it?_ Clarke frowned and felt a headache starting in her left temple. Maybe she should take it as some kind of sick compliment that Eusebius had used emotional torture on her, like it indicated a certain level of respect. Apparently all they needed from Harper was docile compliance.

"You don't… do you actually believe in the stuff they're saying?" Clarke asked.

Harper shrugged. "Who cares? I just wanted to get out of that room and be with Jasper, but he's always hanging around with that girl now."

There was a way to do this, Clarke knew. If she could just get them all out of quarantine, eventually there would be an opening. There had to be. It was just a matter of patience and observation.

The next day, she was back in the rec room with a few of the other released delinquents. Jasper was deep in conversation with Avital, Harper braided little Kath's hair, Del was over at the pinball table, and Clarke played ping-pong with Sterling.

Things were starting to feel almost normal when suddenly an alarm started blaring. The kids all flinched at the repetitive, grating sound. _Solar flare_, Clarke thought out of habit. Then remembered where she was.

Avital stood up, checking her watch before putting a reassuring hand on Jasper's shoulder and announcing to the room: "Okay, everybody stay calm and follow me."

She led them down the hallway back to the main concourse. From there they turned down a new corridor that seemed to be heading slightly uphill. As they walked, they were joined by swarms of other people, men and women dressed in a strange combination of formal-looking business clothes and military uniforms. Soon they were moving along in a small crowd and Clarke felt Kath grab onto her hand so she wouldn't get left behind.

"Where are we going?" the girl asked, squeezing close to Clarke.

"I don't know."

The flood of people passed through a heavy-duty steel portal into a large chamber with walls and ceiling covered in brightly painted murals. Benches were lined up in neat rows and there was one large aisle down the center. There were a few other portals around the space and people were streaming in from all sides to fill the benches. Avital rounded up the kids and seated them in a cluster near the back.

Clarke could smell fresh air blowing in cold from the outside. Twisting around in place, she figured that it was coming from the largest portal in the rear wall. That was the way out! Hope started welling up in her heart, but then she was struck with a chill.

_What in the hell?_ Clarke thought as she looked closer at the people coming in through the big portal. They all had the same face: a nondescript Caucasian man with brown eyes and brown hair. They were all different ages but were dressed in identical green jumpsuits, just like the men that had come to take her from the drop ship the morning after the battle.

"I don't… What is this?" Clarke said. She looked over at Jasper sitting next to her, but he seemed oblivious, too irritated by the racket of the alarm to hear her or pay any attention to his surroundings.

And then Clarke noticed Mary. There were multiples of her as well, wearing the same jumpsuit. Some Mary's were young teenagers, others middle-aged women, but they clearly shared the same DNA. All told, there were probably a few hundred of them. The last few rows of benches in the back of the chamber were full of these doppelgängers.

"I knew there was something off about her…" She elbowed Jasper, subtly nodding her head toward the back rows. "Hey, are you seeing this?"

"Seeing what?"

"The _clones_, Jasper."

He glanced back over his shoulder at the sea of matching faces then waggled his eyebrows at Clarke. "Mary and Joseph? Yeah. Pretty freaky, huh?"

A massive bang came from somewhere down the big hallway and all of the portal doors started sliding shut at the same time. Clarke felt a rush of air and heard the accompanying hiss as the room was sealed off. Then the alarm finally stopped and the whole chamber settled into anxious silence.

Up on the stage at the stage at the far end of the room, a man approached the podium and cleared his throat. Clarke was too far back to see him very clearly, but he was gray-haired and wore a dark business suit and bright red tie.

"Brothers and sisters," he said into the microphone, "blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand…"

While he rambled on, Clarke examined the murals on every surface of the chamber. They must have taken years to complete. She recognized scenes from Revelation: beasts covered in eyeballs, the book with seven seals, the four horses and their riders. On the wall behind the speaker was an enormous, terrifying representation of God with white hair and burning eyes, golden stars in one hand and a sword for a tongue.

"… And the fifth Angel blew the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from Heaven unto the earth, and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and there arose the smoke of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun, and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit…"

Clarke felt the ground beneath her start to rumble ever so slightly as her eyes settled on the painting of the scene that the man was reading about. There it was: the column of smoke bursting out of the ground, yellow and swirling and filled with lightning_. _It looked exactly like the acid fog.

As man on stage described how the smoke of the pit would sting the nonbelievers and how they would beg for death, Clarke looked over the faces of the people sitting in the audience. None of them looked scared or disturbed. Instead there was a sense of happy anticipation. This was what they wanted, Clarke realized. They _wanted_ the end of the world.

**Abby**

She stood in the deep snow watching the sky for any signs of Jaha, barely even feeling her frozen feet anymore. It was three days now since he'd last contacted them and she wasn't quite ready to admit to herself that she might never see or hear from him again.

The ominous yellow thunderhead that had materialized on the eastern horizon earlier that afternoon was finally dissipating and drifting away over the distant mountains. Campfires were being lit as dusk settled over the valley and the stars appeared overhead. Abby was just about to head back in to the clinic when she heard a commotion break out at the far end of the camp.

"Doctor Griffin!" someone shouted. "Bring the stretcher, quick!"

She dashed inside, startling Jackson who had been dozing off in a chair at Murphy's bedside. "Abby, what…"

"I think there's been some kind of accident," she said, fumbling with the stretcher as she grabbed it from its place up against the wall. "Help me with this, will you?"

By the time they were back outside, she could see a cluster of people carrying two limp bodies down the main throroughfare towards the clinic. She and Jackson headed out to meet them, struggling through the drifts of snow. "It's the search party. They're back," said a voice in the growing crowd of onlookers.

"What happened?" Abby asked as they loaded a man onto the stretcher. He was making a strangled, gargling noise and all of the exposed areas of his skin were covered in huge blisters. The other man they carried had the same wounds, but was apparently already dead. They dropped him unceremoniously in the snow.

"We were on our way back," one of the search party said, gasping for breath as they headed to the clinic, "and we got caught in some kind of burning, electric fog. We ran and hid out in some caves, but Scott and Steve… Is Scott going to die?"

Abby looked up at him grimly, seeing the pleading look in his eyes. "It's not good. Whatever was in that fog is in his airways now."

Scott started coughing and foamy blood began to leak from his mouth. Abby thought for a moment about intubation, but doubted it would make any difference at this point. They must have carried him like this through the mountains for hours. With her fingers pressed to his neck, she felt for his heartbeat. Abby and Jackson made eye contact, an unspoken message passing between them: _it's too late_. She gave poor Scott an injection of morphine and soon his slow, crackling breaths stopped entirely.

When it was done, Abby looked up and saw that Kane had come into the room at some point and was standing with the three surviving members of the search party, arms folded across his chest.

"It was the acid fog," she said to him weakly. The kids had told them about it on the radio before everything went wrong. That must have been the yellow storm cloud she saw earlier.

"It hit as we were passing near Mount Weather," the search party's leader said. "Someone blew a horn… like a warning. We think it was the Grounders."

"Did you find their camp?" Kane asked.

"No, but we found the Exodus ship…"

"Where?"

"Up in the mountains to the north. But there's no way anyone survived that."

"What do you mean?" Abby asked, standing up to involve herself in the conversation.

"It must have crashed somehow. It was exploded all over the place, just a pile of twisted metal."

"And there were _no_ signs of Diana Sydney or any of her people?" Kane pressed him.

"Well, there were a couple of burned up skeletons…"

Kane turned to look at Abby, his mouth hanging open in confusion. She knew just what he was thinking. If Diana Sydney was dead, then that meant it was someone else in Mount Weather operating that radio transmitter.

"Okay," he said, turning back to the search party, "tell no one what you saw. If anyone asks, you can tell them about the acid fog, but _that's it_. As far as anyone knows, your mission came up empty. Go get something to eat, take the night off, then come meet me back here in the morning for further instructions."

They nodded, giving Scott one last look before turning and heading back out into the snow. Then it was just Kane, Abby, and Jackson left in the clinic with a dead man and an unconscious boy lying on cots below them.

"What are you planning?" Abby asked Kane.

"I'm going to find out who the hell is occupying Mount Weather."

"You have no idea what's up there. If it's not Diana…"

"Exactly."

They stared each other down for a second and Abby had to admit he was right. If they had a new enemy to worry about, they needed to find out as much as they could as soon as possible. Still, some deeper fear was pulling at her. "Can you at least wait until Jaha gets here?"

"Abby…" he said, his face softening with empathy. "I don't think he's coming."

"It's only been three days, Marcus. Maybe he landed farther away than planned and it's just taking him a while to walk here."

Kane nodded, pressing his lips into a tiny smile. "Yeah. You could be right. Anyway, I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night," Abby said as he disappeared out the door.


	7. Chapter 7

**Thelonious**

The sun streamed through the window, hitting Thelonious in the face and waking him up immediately. For a few seconds, he had no idea where he was or what was happening.

Then he remembered: he was on the ground. In China.

He had fallen asleep last night on a thin straw mattress in a room surrounded by other sleeping men. Even though it must have been very early in the morning, the others were gone now. All of the little beds had been put away and Thelonious was lying in the middle of the floor alone.

Stepping out onto the veranda, he heard chanting coming from one of the other buildings. _That's where they all went_, he thought. The place had to be some kind of Buddhist temple, preserved for generations in the mountains away from the cities.

As he walked out into the middle of the overgrown yard, Thelonious tilted his head up to the sky and breathed deep. He might never get over this feeling: the exhilaration of wide-open space, the sound of the wind swishing through the tall grass and caressing his skin.

"This is what being alive is," he said, partially to himself and partially to Wells as he paced towards the main gate.

Beyond the gate, the mountain dropped sharply downward so that the expansive view of the surrounding countryside was framed by the massive structure like a work of art. The view stretched out for hundreds of miles. Anything could be out there. Anything at all.

"Jaha!"

He turned and spotted his short friend from the day before making his way towards the gate. The man was bundled up warmly and carried a heavy pack with a bedroll on his back.

"Good morning, Ping," he said. At least he had been able to figure out a few names the night before, even if almost everything else remained a mystery. Pingi walked up and stood beside Thelonious. He spoke several sentences to him in Mandarin, apparently not caring that he wasn't being understood.

"Where are you going?" Thelonious asked, marching in place and then pointing to the large walking stick the smaller man was carrying.

Ping pointed down the mountain, then held his hand over his eyes, miming that he was looking for something. Then came a few more sentences in Mandarin during which he repeated something that sounded like "jeng joe" several times. Seeing the blank look on Thelonious's face, Ping pointed down the mountain, said "lǎowài," then made a scooping motion towards Thelonious and said "Jaha."

"You're bringing me lǎowài?" Thelonious mimed pulling something towards his own chest. "Lǎowài?"

"Duí!" Ping nodded. He said something else that seemed like more explanation, then patted Thelonious on the arm and started down the slope.

"What in the world is a lǎowài?" he said to himself, watching Ping disappear into the forest.

The chanting session finally ended and someone came to get Thelonious and brought him to breakfast. He was sat at a table across from the temple's leader. His name, as Jaha had put together the day before, was Shí Shān Bo. They ate in silence but when the meal was over, the old man produced a scroll of blank rice paper and a stick of charcoal. He held them out to Thelonious and nodded solemnly.

"Okay," Thelonious said, talking the charcoal and leaning over to draw on the paper.

He started by making a big circle to represent the Earth, trying to draw in the continents as best he could with his limited artistic ability. Just in case, he made a sphere shape in the air with his hands and swept his arms out in an attempt to indicate the ground. "Earth," he said.

Then he drew the Ark in orbit, simplifying it to a little box, and lightly filled in the area around it to show the blackness of space. For added effect, he drew a crescent moon and stars. Pointing to his own chest and then tapping his finger against the Ark in his drawing, Thelonious said, "I was _here_."

Shí Shān Bo murmured something to the man sitting next to him and shook his head in apparent disbelief.

"Ninety-seven years," he said. How was he supposed to get that across?

He drew a square around the first drawing, then moved down the scroll of paper and started redrawing the scene in a new square. This time he drew mushroom clouds all over the surface of the Earth. Shí Shān Bo nodded sadly to show he understood. Finally Thelonious drew the image again, this time with an arrow from the Ark down to the ground.

He pointed up to the ceiling then slowly brought his finger down in a big arc to land on the wooden surface of the table. "And now I'm here."

Shí Shān Bo nodded, eye wide as if to say, _Impressive!_

"What about you?" Thelonious asked, holding out the charcoal stick.

The older man took the stick and looked down at the rice paper for a long moment. With a sigh, he pointed to the picture of the Earth covered in mushroom clouds. Then he moved to a blank space on the paper and started drawing an outline of the map of China. "Zhōng guó."

When he was sure Thelonious understood, he drew a little dot in the map near the central eastern area of the country. "Shàolín Sì," he said, tapping the dot. Then with a sigh he started drawing big black crosses over the places along the coast where Thelonious knew the major cities had once been: Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong…

"Terrible," Thelonious said quietly, meeting the older man's eyes and shaking his head. _I don't know what I expected_, he thought.

After the table was cleared, Thelonious followed them outside to the yard where the men all fell into a grid formation. With Shí Shān Bo at the front of the pack, they started through a series of synchronized movements: deep lunges, kicks, and sharp hand strikes.

Somewhere in his chest, Thelonious felt a poignant twist and he thought for a second that he might burst into tears. Humanity could tear itself to shreds but here these men were, just carrying on with tradition like their ancestors for hundreds of years.

**Abby**

She hadn't gotten any sleep. Murphy's fever had spiked the night before and she stayed up to watch him, passing the time by running tests on Scott's acid fog blisters. By the time the sun was rising, Abby had just about decided that Murphy's leg was going to have to go.

A silhouette appeared on the curtain over the door and she felt a jolt of nervousness. Maybe it was Jackson arriving for his shift and she could start prepping for surgery right away. But it wasn't Jackson. It was Kane, followed closely by three of his scouts.

"Marcus, this isn't a good time…"

He frowned down at her where she sat next to Murphy, holding the boy's hand. "He looks terrible."

"I need to amputate the leg as soon as possible."

"Fuck," Kane said under his breath with a grimace. "What are you waiting for?"

"I'm starting as soon as Jackson gets here, which is why you all need to find somewhere else for your meeting."

She stood up and shoved past Kane on her way to the stove. While she bent down to feed more logs into the fire, he went right on talking at her: "This concerns you too, Abby. You need to know what's happening."

"Oh? Why's that?" She said, putting a pot of melted snow on the stovetop to boil.

"I need you to run the camp for me while I'm gone."

_That_ made her pause. Abby took a good look at him for the first time that morning and realized that he was dressed for an expedition. There were two handguns holstered on his belt. _Just like Thelonious_, she thought, _always with some kind of death wish._ "Marcus, I don't have any time to play politics. This poor kid needs me to save his life right now."

Kane huffed in frustration, shifting his feet into a wider stance. "Just listen to me for five minutes, please. We…" he pointed to himself and the three scouts, "are leaving for Mount Weather. I don't know when we'll be back, so _when you are done with your work here_, I would _appreciate_ if you would give some thought to taking on some leadership responsibilities."

"We'll see," Abby smirked. Kane rolled his eyes and moved as if he were about to leave the clinic, but Abby stopped him. "Wait. I isolated the toxin from the acid fog. I think it may be synthetic, but I can't be sure without an NMR and IR spectrum."

"I have no idea what that means."

"It means that the fog isn't a natural phenomenon. Someone is making it, maybe. _Probably_."

Kane's eyes narrowed. "Someone at Mount Weather, you mean."

"That would be my first guess. You might want to take one of the engineers with you, just in case. Maybe you can find the source of the fog and shut it down."

"Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves from it?" One of the scouts spoke up. The three of them were hovering by the door, fidgeting with their utility belts and gun holsters.

"Gas masks would do the most good," Abby said. "The main thing would be to not breathe it in and to keep your skin covered as much as possible. If you can, take cover in a cave. A tent might be enough."

The men nodded slowly. Kane gave Abby a grateful look and started ushering them back out into the snow. "Thank you, Abby," he said. "Good luck with the surgery."

"One more thing!" Abby reached out for his wrist. "If… if you find Bellamy Blake… if he's at Mount Weather, what will you do with him?"

"Blake?" Kane arched an eyebrow and glanced over at Murphy. Then he lowered his voice. "Abby, don't you think you're giving him a little too much credit? He was a _janitor_ on the Ark, for fuck's sake."

"That doesn't mean anything."

"It means he's not likely to be masterminding a multi-pronged attack with radio frequency jamming and toxic fog from his fortress in the mountains, Abby." He furrowed his brow at her, trying to get her to meet his gaze. "I know you're grieving and you want answers, but _think_ about this for a second."

She raised her eyes to his proudly and said nothing. In the uncomfortable silence, the scouts quietly slipped behind the curtain and left the clinic.

"Maybe this Murphy kid is confused," Kane continued, placing his hands on Abby's biceps and squeezing lightly. "You said yourself that his wounds indicate he endured _weeks_ of torture. Isn't it possible that there are some psychological effects you're not taking into account here?"

"Like what?" Abby shrugged, glancing back over her shoulder at the kid. "Amnesia?"

"Or false memories, hallucinations… I'm just saying: he could be wrong about things. _Lots_ of things."

Kane took a step closer and drew her in for a hug. Abby let herself relax while he rubbed his hand in a circle over her back. Sometimes Kane _wasn't_ the most irritating person in the universe, she had to admit to herself. But then she pulled back, suddenly wary of giving in to false hope. Kane let her go.

"But to answer you question," he said, "if I _do_ find Blake, I'll bring him back here to you before I make any decisions."

"Okay."

With a strained smile, Kane pushed the curtain aside and went out into the snow. Abby turned back to the stove and carefully lowered a bone saw into the boiling water. Jackson would be there any minute now.

**Bellamy**

Something wasn't right. Octavia should have been sulking. Instead she was fussing over him, admiring the bulky parka he'd been given for the journey. "This fur is beautiful," she said, running her hand along the edge of its hood. "What do you think it is? Wolf?"

"I feel like Sir Edmund Hillary."

"_Who?_ Is that tea helping you at all?"

Bellamy nodded and took another sip, hot vapors seeping deep into his lungs. The village doctor had given him a whole packet of the tea to take with him and wrapped a huge bandage around his rib cage. Octavia's leg had also been rewrapped. Finn got a jar of ointment to smear over his burns and a woolen hat to keep his half-shaved head warm.

"Say your goodbyes, people. We leave in ten." Bodie called out to the group assembled in front of the longhouse.

Besides Bellamy and Finn, Bodie had picked out four of the villagers for the mission. Two of them, Ryan and Grant, were burly men in their thirties. The other two were women. The first, Christine, was tall and stoic. The other was Sunny's guitarist girlfriend, Alex.

While Ryan knelt down to hug his two small kids and Alex gave Sunny a long kiss, Bellamy turned to Octavia and Lincoln. His sister threw her arms around his neck and held onto him for a long time. When she pulled back, he could see the hurt and anger in her eyes, but she put on a brave smile and said, "We'll see you soon, Bell. Right?"

"Absolutely," Bellamy said, feeling Finn scowling at him from a few yards away. _Always so judgmental,_ he thought.

"Yeah, well…" Octavia blinked back a tear and lifted her chin, "just make sure you get our people out of there."

He nodded at them, pressing his lips together in a firm line. Lincoln nodded back and reached over to squeeze Octavia's hand as she smiled up at her brother.

"Take care, Finn," she said to the other boy.

"You too, Octavia. Lincoln."

With one last half-hearted smile, Bellamy turned and walked over to Alex. They had decided that he and Finn would ride with the girls to minimize the strain on the horses. Alex held out a bow and quiver to him when he approached.

"Here, carry these on your back," she said.

He took the weapons from her and frowned. "What if I fall off the horse and smash them?"

"Are you a clumsy asshole?"

"…No."

"Then we should be fine."

It was awkward for Bellamy to climb up onto the horse with the long piece of curved wood strapped to him and even more awkward to wrap his arms around Alex's waist. Her close-cropped curls scratched against his cheek with every step the horse took. She turned the animal around in a circle while they waited for the rest of the group.

Bodie was still standing off to the side, talking with his wife in hushed tones. Luna's arms were folded across her chest and she was staring blankly into the middle distance. As Bellamy watched them, Bodie took Luna's chin between his thumb and forefinger, gently turned her face up to his, and pressed a tiny kiss to her lips. It didn't seem to make her feel any better.

"Alright. Let's go," Bodie shouted.

Bellamy looked back over his shoulder as they rode away, trying to keep his sights on Octavia for as long as he possibly could before the horse turned a corner and she disappeared from view.

It was a much faster trip with everyone on horseback. They were through the cornfields and deep into the woods before midday. At sunset, they stopped to make camp in a small clearing.

That night around the campfire, Bellamy tried to read his book but his mind kept drifting away from the words on the page. Giving up, he whispered the list of names to himself for the thousandth time: "… Clarke, Fox, Jasper, Anya, Jones…"

The others were listening peacefully as Alex sang a song about travelling. She had a warm, soulful voice and Bellamy wondered if she missed having her guitar with her. Grant and Bodie tried to help her out by keeping rhythm with stomps and claps, singing harmonies with her when they could.

As things were winding down, Bellamy stood up and brushed the dirt from his pants. Finn looked up at him as if to ask, _where are you going?_

"Gotta take a piss," he said and walked off into the black night.

When the light of the campfire was only a distant glow, he stopped near and tree and went to unzip. But just then he saw a shadow move in the corner of his eye and he spun around, feeling his heart about to jump right out of his chest. It was a horse. Bellamy immediately recognized the white blaze down the middle of its dark face.

"What are you doing here, Jeremy?"

A branch snapped and Lincoln stepped out from behind the horse, holding his hands up in surrender. Bellamy could only stare furiously as Lincoln inched towards him saying, "Bellamy, I'm _sorry_…"

"Where is she?"

"In a cave just behind that thicket."

"What the hell, Lincoln? I finally start to trust you and this is the first thing you do?" He flapped his arms helplessly, mentally kicking himself for even being surprised by this turn of events. _Of course_ this was always going to happen.

"You know how she is better than anyone. She would have followed you with or without me. I just didn't want her to get hurt."

"She's _already_ hurt!" Bellamy snapped but he felt his anger starting to fade. The Grounder was right. Octavia had never blindly accepted his authority and she probably never would. Maybe that was a good thing, but maybe it would get her killed. Bellamy shook his head and shrugged. "Well, you might as well bring her over to the campfire.

**Clarke**

She was in an expansive office with mahogany furniture, plush leather chairs, and silk-shaded lamps. There were more paintings on the walls here, but not murals. These were framed works of art like the one in her white cell. Eusebius sat in one of the chairs, watching Clarke carefully as she stood up and moved to take a closer look at the massive painting hanging behind the desk.

"Do you like it?" A vaguely familiar voice came from behind her. She turned around to see that a man had entered the room from a side door. He was the one who spoke on the stage in the suit and tie, Clarke realized.

"It's…" she searched for a word to describe the painting.

"El Greco, _The Vision of Saint John_," he said as he walked over to her and held out his hand. "It's nice to finally meet you, Clarke. I'm Silas Wheeler."

"I enjoyed your reading the other day," she said, shaking his hand and trying not to wince at his strong grip.

"Thank you, Clarke! Please have a seat." As he moved to sit behind the desk, he gestured to Eusebius. "You can go now."

When they were alone, Wheeler rested his forearms on the desk and leaned towards her. His whole appearance and demeanor suggested a tidy, respectable grandfather type, but his gray eyes twinkled with something that left a nervous knot in Clarke's stomach.

"Eusebius tells me that you've been ministering to your friends," he said, "visiting them, counseling them to repent, encouraging their spiritual development…"

"Yes, sir."

"You're doing the Lord's work, Clarke. But I'm concerned." He tented his fingers in front of his chin and squinted at her. "I don't think our message is getting through to some of them. I know you realize how vitally, _eternally_ important it is that they come around, Clarke."

Breaking into a cold sweat, Clarke thought of Raven. She had visited her just the day before and offered to help her with her physical therapy. But Raven was aloof, insisting she didn't need any help to stand, heaving herself out of her wheelchair and onto the parallel bars without even glancing at Clarke.

Monty was only a little bit easier to handle than Raven. Whenever Clarke would beg him to confess and be freed from quarantine, she could see the suspicion in his eyes. She could only hope he was picking up on the message in her subtext: _Please just play along. It's the first step to getting out of here._

She had talked to most of the other kids with varying degrees of success. Miller seemed to get it right away and had made it out of quarantine already. Monroe was coming around…

"I'm doing the best I can."

"There is no time for failure," Wheeler said, lowering his hands back down the desktop and looking her in the eye sternly, "The great day of His wrath is come."

"Please let me keep trying, sir," she said in a small voice, forcing herself to meet his withering stare.

He pushed back from the desk and stood up. "I think there's something you need to see. Come with me."

They left the office and wound through the corridor maze until they reached a door guarded by two Joseph clones. There was a sign that said "No Unauthorized Entry" and above the door was an unplugged light box that read "On Air."

It turned out to be a dark, unused television studio. Glow-in-the-dark tape on the floor led to a small flight of stairs, which in turn led to a control booth. One wall in the booth was almost entirely covered in small monitors, many of them showing videos of the white rooms in the quarantine ward. Clarke could see Monty pacing back and forth in one of them. On another screen, Raven slept on her hospital bed.

"Clarke, this is our video engineer, Nathaniel, and his assistant Mary," Wheeler said as the man at the soundboard looked up and pulled off his headphones.

"How do you do?" Nathaniel asked, nodding at them.

"Hi," Clarke said. At the sound of her voice, the Mary clone glanced over and made eye contact with her. _She's different_, Clarke recognized. It wasn't just the identifying scar through her left eyebrow, but there was something proud in her bearing that made her stand out from the others Clarke had seen.

"Nathaniel," Wheeler said, skipping straight over any small talk, "would you please cue up Joseph's footage from earlier this morning?"

"Yes, sir," he replied, punching a series of buttons and bringing up a video on the central monitor.

At first, Clarke didn't know what she was looking at. The camera was so shaky everything was a blur of white and gray. The sounds coming from the speakers were ominous: crunching footsteps, heavy breathing, and whimpering.

Then the image settled down and Clarke realized the footage was from outdoors. There was at least a foot of snow on the ground. Whoever was carrying the camera was walking a few steps behind an armed man, presumably another Joseph clone, in a green jumpsuit and gas mask. He was pointing his rifle at the backs of a group of kids, marching them forward through the deep snow despite the fact that they were barefoot and dressed only in white shorts and tops.

"They repented not of their murder, and of their sorcery, neither of their fornication, nor of their theft," Wheeler said calmly from over Clarke's shoulder. "They must be cast out."

Realization dawned on Clarke. There were letting them go. The cameraman and the Joseph clone stopped and let the kids continue forward down the mountainside. There were five of them: Fox, Olivier, Megan, Lennox, and Robert. They were horribly exposed to the elements, but they were _free_.

Clarke could see a shimmer of water up ahead of them through the bare branches and wondered if it was the river they had tried to cross on that first day on the ground. A heavy wave of regret washed over her. _I made the wrong play_, she thought. If she had stayed stubborn and defiant long enough, they would have let her walk out.

Just as her head was drooping in defeat, the armed clone in the video fired two gunshots straight into the air. It was so loud, the audio coming through the speakers clipped. Nathaniel shifted uncomfortably in his chair and looked away from the monitor. Mary closed her eyes.

"They repented not," Wheeler said again, "and they shall drink the wine of the wrath of God."

The kids were getting smaller in the monitor as they walked farther from the camera. Then something zipped across the screen and one of them was suddenly pinned to a tree. A girl screamed.

Clarke gasped. Wheeler said nothing.

The kids were overcoming their shock and starting to scatter, but Reapers came running towards them, swinging clubs and wielding spears. It was over in a matter of seconds and all five of them were dragged off, leaving trails of bright red blood on the snow. The monitor went black.

The control booth was silent except for Clarke's panicked breathing. In her head she could still hear the kids' screams. Then she heard Bellamy asking her, _How many more of our people need to die until you realize we're fighting a war?_ For a second, her thoughts went to the shard of glass still packaged discreetly in her cargo pocket. If she was fast enough, maybe she could slit Wheeler's throat. But what kind of escape could she possibly make afterwards?

"So you see, Clarke," Wheeler said, "your efforts will have to improve. If your friends continue to hold on to their wickedness, I'm afraid we will have no choice but to release them. They have no place in the Kingdom of Heaven."

She couldn't look at him for fear that he would see the rage on her face. But then maybe Wheeler had never trusted her or believed her act to begin with. Wasn't that the subtext of this whole display?

"I'll do better tomorrow," she said. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Abby**

"Abby, Abby!"

She opened her eyes to see Anita leaning over her and remembered where she was: crashed out on the empty cot in the clinic. The dim light filtering in through the curtain on the door was pale blue and Abby wasn't entirely sure if it was dusk or dawn.

"He's moving," Anita said. "I think he's coming around."

The boy woke up and Abby nearly cried with relief. No morphine-induced coma. That was one worry to cross off her list, at least.

"John?"

At first his strange, buggy eyes were hazy and confused but when they came into focus they were filled with intense fear. He opened his mouth to speak and immediately started choking on the dryness of his own throat. Anita was there quickly with a cup of water and Abby supported his head and neck as he gulped it down.

"John, do you remember where you are and what happened to you?"

He nodded, looking back and forth at Abby and Anita anxiously through his long, stringy hair. "My leg hurts."

"Mmm…" Abby clenched her jaw and smoothed his hair as he settled back onto the pillow. Trying to keep a reassuring expression on her face, she said, "John, I have some bad news. The wound in your leg became very infected. I'm sorry, but there was nothing I could do to save it."

"I don't understand…"

"We had to amputate. I'm sorry, John."

His mouth hung open as he gave them a disbelieving stare, then he raised himself up just enough to look down and see the flat area under the blankets where his left leg should be. After a tense moment, he flopped back down onto the pillow and turned his face away, his eyes rolling around in their sockets miserably.

Anita and Abby glanced at each other and Abby reached out to the boy, but he slapped her hand away. She already knew to expect that kind of reaction. "We'll get you through this. I promise…"

"You stupid bitch."

"_Excuse_ me?" Anita said, looking down at him with a mixture of surprise and offense. Abby had to grab the nurse's wrist to keep her from slapping the boy. "You would have _died_. Dr. Griffin saved your life."

"You stupid fucking cunts," he hissed at them.

"Anita, please go get Jackson."

"And bring a gun to put me out of my misery!" Murphy shouted at her as she dashed out of the clinic, the tendons in his neck straining with effort. As soon as she was gone, he fell back limply and turned to Abby again. "Why didn't you just let me die?"

She let him stare her down for a long moment so he could see in her eyes that no amount of cursing or yelling would scare her away. His breath eventually slowed down as she watched his rage solidify and cool down.

"I'm disappointed, John."

He turned away, rolling his eyes and scoffing.

"When I first met you – alone in the forest, half dead – I thought to myself, 'what an amazing will to live this kid must have.' You've been tortured, stabbed, abandoned and rejected by everyone and you kept going anyway. I thought you were strong enough to deal with this."

He rotated his head back towards her and she was a little taken aback to see that he was grinning cruelly. "You don't know anything about me, bitch."

"I know you're scared."

Just then, Jackson pushed aside the curtain, letting in a burst of cold air and ray of morning sunlight. Abby saw Murphy's pupils constrict rapidly against the brightness before she turned to Jackson.

"Anita said you needed me?"

"Yeah," she said, standing and picking up her jacket off the back of the chair. "I need you to take care of John while I go talk to the Greens. He's gonna need more painkillers than we have to give him."

Jackson's eyes flicked over her shoulder to the bed and then he nodded. Abby leaned in a little closer to him and said quietly, "He's on suicide watch. Don't leave him alone."

Stepping out into the snow, Abby headed down the valley toward the lake. The clinic was situated about midway between Tesla Station and Mecha Station. The thinking had been that they'd want it in a central location to minimize the distance anyone would have to travel in an emergency. What they hadn't really considered was that most people preferred to live close to the lake where the land was less rocky and uneven and the view of the landscape was more open. The Greens in particular had wanted to build their home near fertile soil so they would be able to keep a garden and grow ingredients for their pharmaceuticals like they had done on Agro Station.

Abby felt guilty visiting them so early in the morning and when Phillip answered the door, she could see that he was exhausted. There were heavy bags under his dull, black eyes and every line in his face seemed to have deepened.

"I'm so sorry, did I wake you?"

"No, no, don't worry about it," he said, stepping back to let her inside. "I haven't really been sleeping much since…"

_Right, of course_, Abby remembered. Their son had been one of the hundred, too. She grimaced and nodded to his wife Emma as she moved forward into the little wooden room.

Abby tried not to stare too blatantly as she surveyed the inside of their home. It was nearly empty, devoid of anything but the most practical elements. There were chairs made out of roughly sawed logs, a long sheet of metal that served as a table, and a shelf cluttered with glassware and hoses for running chemical reactions.

"Hey, Abby," Emma sighed. Abby sat down next to her, trying not to wince as a jagged edge of tree bark stuck into her thigh. "What's up?"

Figuring the Greens were too depressed to bother with small talk, Abby dove right in. "I know when we first came down that we talked about building up our drug stocks in the spring when we can grow things, but some things came up. I'm going to run out of morphine in a couple of days and I've got a seventeen year-old boy who just lost his leg laying in my clinic. Do you have any suggestions at all?"

They were thoughtful for a moment then Phillip cast a quick glance at his wife and leaned forward. "If we could salvage enough glass from the ships, we could try to build a greenhouse. But it would still be months before we could harvest poppies."

"There's salicylic acid in white willow bark," Emma said. "But who knows if there are any white willows around here. Maybe some fish oil might help him. There's gotta be something living in that lake…"

"And I guess you could always ask Nygel. See if she has anything squirrelled away."

"_Nygel_?" Abby held back the string of four-letter words that immediately came to her lips. How the hell had that rat managed to stay hidden all this time? Did Kane know? "Nygel is still alive?"

**Bellamy**

"Relax your fingers."

"I'm trying."

"But actually _do_ it, though."

Lincoln and Alex snickered behind his back as Bellamy rolled his eyes at his sister. "I didn't know you were such an expert at this, O."

"Don't hate me just because I'm naturally talented."

Bellamy let go of the arrow and it shot through the air, sticking into the side of the marked tree with a satisfying thud. Not letting the rush of adrenaline show on his face, he calmly passed the bow to Octavia and stepped back.

"You're getting better," Bodie said to him as they watched Octavia kick at the ankle-deep snow on the ground and move fluidly into an open stance. "Still, I think you'd better go with Christine tomorrow."

Bodie's words, combined with Octavia's triumphant hoot as her arrow hit the bullseye, were like a punch to Bellamy's gut. They'd only been practicing this for one afternoon, so how could Bodie already make the judgment that Bellamy was their _worst_ archer?

"Then let me trade jobs with Finn at least."

Alex laughed out loud while Bodie gave him an appraising look. "They'd never buy it. You're too willful."

"What? Come on!" Bellamy said half-heartedly, knowing he was just proving Bodie right. He glanced back over his shoulder at Finn where he sat on a log with Christine, going over the maps of the facility. Even at this distance, Bellamy could read Finn's body language as he leaned in towards the young woman, smiling and brushing his fingers against her forearm.

"You have an important job to do, Bell," Bodie pulled his attention back. "Without you, we all die. Keep your focus."

In between firing off arrows, Octavia glanced over at them anxiously. She looked so fierce, Bellamy thought, as she stood in the snow holding the bow as if she were born with it in her hand. Her long hair lifted on the cold wind, swirling with the white cloud of her frozen breath.

"Besides," Alex said, jabbing Bellamy lightly in the arm with her fist and waggling her eyebrows, "you get to play with the fireworks."

"True, true…" He couldn't help the smile that snuck onto his face as he nodded. Lincoln, who had been listening in on the conversation silently, let out a low chuckle. Their eyes met and for one weird second, Bellamy actually didn't hate the Grounder.

"So go meet with Christine," Bodie said. "Get your shit straightened out."

"Alright."

Bellamy paced back towards the campfire and cleared off a space to sit on a boulder a few feet away from Finn and Christine. They looked up at him as he approached, but went right back into their conversation as if he wasn't there.

"…if you don't gain their trust, none of this will work anyway," Christine was saying.

"No sweat," Finn said, flipping his hair out of his eyes to give her a confident smile. "I play the penitent bad boy pretty well."

Christine blushed and stared down at the pages they held between them. Her free hand came up to tuck a lock of her long, dark hair behind her ear. "Not just penitent, though. _Miserable_ with guilt. Desperate for salvation."

"Don't worry about Finn," Bellamy cut in. "He's always hard up for salvation."

_What the fuck does that even mean,_ he thought, cringing at his own words as they came out of his mouth. Bellamy didn't understand himself at all sometimes. Why should he care if Spacewalker wanted to flirt a little before heading into mortal danger? But there was this lump of irritation building in the center of Bellamy's chest and for some reason he couldn't swallow it down.

"What?" Finn glared at him.

"Nothing."

"If you have something to say to me, then just say it."

Poor Christine looked like she wanted to melt into the snow and disappear. Grant, who sat by the fire skinning a rabbit, looked up from his work and listened as the tone of the conversation grew sharper.

"I was just wondering if you're going to be excited to see Clarke and Raven tomorrow," Bellamy said, unable to stop himself. "When we were walking to the ocean, you wouldn't shut up about them. But _now_…"

Finn's eyes narrowed. "I didn't realize you cared."

"I just know how hard it is for you to be alone."

"Why don't you save the big brother act for Octavia, asshole," Finn said loudly, drawing Ryan's attention now as well. "This is none of your business."

"I just don't want anymore of your heartbroken girlfriends jumping me in the middle of the night."

Someone behind him, probably Alex, let out a low whistle. _Goddamn it_, Bellamy thought as soon as he said it. _What the fuck am I doing?_

Either Finn was slow to process Bellamy's statement or he was so upset he couldn't speak. When he finally opened his mouth, he sounded like he might cry. "You slept with Clarke?"

"What? No…"

Suddenly Finn launched himself at Bellamy and they fell hard into the snow. As he threw his arm up to block Finn's swinging fists, Bellamy heard Octavia shriek. Amid the shouts of the group, Finn was growling, "You fucked _Raven_? You fucking _fucked_ Raven, you motherfucker…"

From his awkward position on the ground Bellamy managed to get in one good shot to Finn's gut and flip himself upright. Just as he was rearing back to crack the kid in the jaw, Lincoln grabbed him by the elbows and pulled him up.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Bodie hissed, pushing Bellamy backwards with one hand while glaring down at Finn. "There's goddamn Reapers in these woods, for fuck's sake. If you gotta fight, keep it the fuck down."

Finn was lying in the snow, holding his stomach and gasping for air. For a moment, Bellamy looked at him and realized that Finn was going into the mountain in the morning. They might never see each other again. Maybe that was for the best.

**Clarke**

Jasper watched Clarke and Monty from a few tables away in the mess hall. Even with Avital sitting close by, touching him gently as they talked, he seemed sad and confused. Monty was trying to avoid making eye contact with him, staring down at his bowl of oatmeal while Clarke explained her plan.

"If we can get everyone out of quarantine, I think it could work," she said under her breath. "But that's easier said than done, right?"

He smirked, silently acknowledging his own resistance. It had been such a relief when Monty finally caught on to her "sermons" about freedom from isolation. For a minute there, Clarke had been worried that she'd give away her whole game by being too obvious. There was always someone watching them in quarantine. Eusebius, Avital, the cameras…

"But Raven will still be in the hospital, won't she? They didn't bring her out the last time the alarm went off. How much longer is she gonna be down there?"

"Doctor Lipton said a few more weeks," Clarke bit her lip. "But that's not so bad. As long as everybody else is out of quarantine, we won't lose anybody and we can just bide our time until she's ready."

A shadow fell over their table and someone in a green jumpsuit set down a tray of food across from them. When Clarke looked up, she immediately recognized Mary from the television studio by the silver scar through her eyebrow. Monty stiffened but Clarke put her hand on his knee under the table and smiled at Mary.

"Hello, Clarke. Monty."

"It's nice to see you again, Mary."

The clone smirked and took a sip of water from her cup. "You know, it's funny: I feel like I'm seeing the two of you all the time. Chatting in the mess hall, whispering in the rec room… if I didn't know better, I'd say you're up to something."

He was hiding it well, but Clarke could tell Monty was freaking out by the slight trembling of his hands. It was a gamble, she knew, but she had to trust her instincts here. She raised an eyebrow at Mary and asked, "Can't you hear what we're talking about when you watch us?"

"Not in the mess hall. No microphones in here."

"You must get good at lip reading, though. How much time do you spend up there in that booth just watching everyone?"

"I'm up there almost all the time. Mary covers for me while I'm on break and Joseph takes the night shift. Sometimes Nathaniel's there, sometimes not."

Monty was relaxing as he recognized what was going on. Clarke took her hand off his knee and folded her arms on the table. "What is it like, Mary? Having so many twins?"

"Twins?" Mary laughed. "That's a nice way of putting it."

"How would _you_ put it, then?"

Still smiling faintly, the expression in Mary's eyes darkened. "We're just disposable copies, Clarke. Mary isn't my twin, she's _me_. And I'm nobody. We don't have souls like Silas Wheeler or Eusebius or you and your friends, so we can do the hard jobs. The jobs that would _destroy_ the soul of a human, like working in quarantine or feeding wicked non-believers to the Reapers. If Joseph gets radiation poisoning while he's working up on the surface, nobody gets upset because there's so many more of him to take his place. And when the final battle comes, Joseph and Mary will sacrifice themselves so that the blessed people who bear the seal of God may enter the New Jerusalem with their souls intact."

As Mary spoke, Clarke could hear the bitterness creeping into her voice. She was just regurgitating the story she'd been told every day for her entire life. But this particular clone didn't believe any of it, did she? She _knew_ she was an individual. She _knew_ she was every bit as human as Wheeler.

Mary paused to drink more water and when she spoke again, her voice was very low. "They only open the gate when the alarm goes off. They have to get Joseph inside before they release the smoke. If you go out the gate during the alarm, the smoke will sting you and you'll die."

Clarke and Monty shared a tense look. "Is there another way out?"

"No."

"So we're stuck here forever."

"I wouldn't say that, but it's gonna be tricky." Mary popped a piece of bread into her mouth, smiling at the kids' confused faces as she chewed. "I think I can help you, but you have to promise to take me with you when you leave."

Clarke and Monty nodded in unison.

"You swear it?"

"Yes, of course," Clarke said, feeling an intense flutter of excitement in her gut.

"Alright. Good," Mary said. Then her face lit up as she remembered something. "Oh, I have some news for you! This morning, another one of your friends walked up to the gate and surrendered to Joseph. He _said_ he was ashamed of his sins and desperate for cleansing, so they brought him inside and put him in quarantine, but it sounds suspicious to me…"

"Who was it?" Clarke asked, grabbing onto Monty's hand under the table and squeezing tightly to keep from letting her emotions show on her face, just in case anyone was watching.

"Finn Collins."

Suddenly, the mess hall seemed very far away and Clarke was receding down a tunnel into her own brain. The edges of her vision went dark and there were little sparkles everywhere…

Monty shook her gently and she realized she had slumped against his shoulder. "Clarke, are you okay?"

"I think I passed out. Finn…"

"Yeah," Mary said, "it turns out he didn't die like you thought."

"It was _just_ Finn? No one was with him?"

"Yeah."

"Oh," Clarke struggled to speak as her throat tried to close up on her. Part of her was bursting with happiness, but the other part was heavy and hollow. "Do you think they'll let me see him?"

Mary pursed her lips and looked down at her tray. "No, probably not. At least not right away. They don't trust him yet. But I think I can get in there and talk to him for you if I can get Mary to switch with me."

"_Please_. Please tell him… tell him I want to know if the art supply store is still open. So he'll know I sent you."

"You got it, Miss Clarke."

**Thelonious**

It was funny how without the interference of artificial light, his body naturally fell into rhythm with the sun. As soon as it was dark out, it just seemed like there was nothing else to do but sleep. Thelonious was managing to fight it off, though. The stars were the only thing that reminded him of home. The only thing that made him feel like he was still himself, still living the same life.

While Thelonious was watching the stars on his fourth night in China, sitting at his favorite perch by the main gate, Ping came trudging up the mountainside from wherever he had been. And he wasn't alone.

Trailing a few steps behind him was a figure bundled in layers of furs and leather, loaded down with an enormous backpack and smaller pouches and bags hanging every which way. It was hard to see who it might be in the dark, but he looked dusty like he had been rolled in mud and baked in the sun.

"Jaha," Ping huffed as he reached the gate, "Key ton."

"Sorry?"

"He means me," the dusty figure said in heavily accented English. He held out his hand for Thelonious to shake. "Francis Keaton. And you're Jaha, I suppose?"

"Oh, thank God!" Thelonious laughed with relief. Real communication at last! He shook Keaton's hand heartily. "Yes, Thelonious Jaha. It's so good to meet you."

The moon and stars were just bright enough that he could make out Keaton's face. He was scrawny with pale, limp hair that hung in jagged pieces across his sharp features. If Thelonious had to guess an age, he would have said thirty-five.

"Now, I might be misinterpreting Ping's charades," Keaton said, "but I come to understand you fucking _fell_ from the fucking _sky_?"

"Yes, actually. I was on a space station."

Keaton shook his head, a slow smile spreading across his face. "And how the fuck did you manage that?"

Thelonious tilted his head to the side and opened his mouth, considering how best explain, but Keaton reached out and grabbed him by both arms to stop him. "No, don't tell me yet! Let's do this in the morning. I want the whole bloody story – _every fucking detail_ – first thing tomorrow morning so I can write it all down!"

Ping motioned frantically for Keaton to be quiet, gesturing towards the dark buildings around the yard where the others slept. When Keaton stopped talking, Ping looked at them and whispered, "Chī fàn?"

"Yes, Ping. Chī fàn, please. That sounds bloody perfect right about now."

"What does that mean? Do you speak Mandarin?" Thelonious asked as Ping led them into the main building.

"It means we're about to eat," Keaton shrugged. "I've picked up some of the more important words since I come east, but I don't think I'll ever really _speak_ this language properly. It's too fucking complicated."

"Where did you come from? Before China?"

"Ah!" The younger man smiled as Ping lit a lantern inside the dark room. Thelonious was struck by Keaton's appearance in the light. His eyes were vivid blue and skin was bright pink along his high cheekbones and the tip of his nose. The effect was almost childlike. "My parents left England before I was born and we never stayed too long in any one place, so I don't know that I can say I really _come_ from anywhere. Western Europe, I expect."

"You walked here from Europe?"

"In a roundabout way, yes."

"That's… incredible."

"Not so incredible as falling from outer fucking space!"

They all sat down at one of the long tables as Ping passed around bowl of cold rice. Thelonious wasn't hungry, but he stuffed it down anyway to be polite. Keaton and Ping ate greedily and Keaton kept talking the entire time, barely managing to keep the grains of rice in his mouth.

"I mean, what am I really going to do with my life in this wasted fucking world but walk around a bit and see what's what? That's what my parents did and now they've passed, I don't see any reason to do different."

"Mmmm…"

"I've got loads of notes taken down about every fucking place I been to, as well," Keaton went on, patting his massive backpack where it sat on the ground next to him. "It's a bit of a pet project of mine. Life's work, if you will. Make a record of what the world for posterity and all."

Thelonious raised his eyebrows. "I'd love to take a look at your notes, if you don't mind."

"Of course, of course! In the morning! We'll trade stories and know everything on Heaven and Earth like a pair of gods."

_I am unbelievably lucky_, Thelonious thought to himself as Keaton munched on a mouthful of rice, his pointy nose wiggling merrily. And he imagined how excited Wells would have been to have this chance to hear stories from all over the world. _But of course, I'd have to ask Keaton to watch his language_.


	9. Chapter 9

**Clarke**

She couldn't sleep. She curled up on her side and listened to Harper, Kath, and Shalia's slow, even breathing and tried futilely to quiet her brain.

_Finn is alive. He's here. I'm going to see him again._

She squeezed her eyes shut, but images of him kept popping up behind her eyelids. He was floating in the drop ship on their way to the ground, handing her a blue pencil, telling Clarke he was in love with her, nodding to her just before she went to close the drop ship…

_I didn't kill him._

And then for some reason Clarke saw Bellamy's face lit by firelight as he shrugged and said, _I'll have my fun when the Grounders come_. A horrible wave of grief surged painfully through her veins and her eyes snapped open. Moving carefully to minimize the squeaking of her bedsprings, she sat up and pressed her feet against the cold cement floor. There was a tapping like a leaky faucet in her brain…

Except it wasn't in her head, she realized. Somebody was there. Clarke stood, tiptoed across the room, and knocked her index finger against the door in a distinct rhythm. After a pause, the tapping was answered from the other side. With one last look at her sleeping roommates, Clarke slipped out into the hallway to find Mary waiting for her. It was very dark in the hall, lit only by dim emergency lights in the ceiling, but she could still make out Mary's scar.

They didn't talk. Clarke followed her through the underground tunnels and they passed through all of the security doors easily with Mary's key. When they finally reached the television studio, the guards that normally stood watch were gone and the control booth was empty.

For probably the millionth time since their conversation in the mess hall, Clarke wondered if this was all one big set up. Mary could be a spy. But then Mary turned a dial on the console, an image of Finn popped onto the monitor, and Clarke realized that she didn't have the will or the energy to keep second-guessing everything.

"Finn!" she whispered, reaching out and touching the screen.

He was in her old room with Starry Night on the wall, lying on her old bed. The lights turning on suddenly seemed to have woken him up and he sat up slowly, squinting and blinking. Right away, Clarke noticed the heavy bandages on his left arm and the uneven cut of his hair.

"What happened to him?" she asked, turning to Mary.

The clone smiled and handed her a headset. "You can ask him yourself. We're not recording."

Clarke couldn't get the thing on her head fast enough. Hot tears were sticking in her eyelashes and blurring her vision. Then Mary flipped a switch and she could hear the sounds of Finn's sheet rustling as he looked around.

"Finn?" she said tentatively. His head jerked up towards the speakers in the ceiling. "Finn, it's Clarke. Can you hear me?"

"Clarke! Yeah," he said, closing his eyes and grinning, "I can hear you. Are you okay?"

"I'm doing pretty well, all things considered," she said, sniffing back the tears and trying to lighten her tone. "How the hell are _you_, Collins? What happened to your arm there?"

He laughed quietly and looked down at the bandages. "Nothing much. I accidentally caught myself on fire a little bit. Just a light toasting. Very minor."

"I'm so sorry about that, Finn…"

A fresh wave of guilty crying nearly overtook her, but he cut her off with a shake of his head. "No, no! It's not your fault. You did the right thing. It's okay."

"But _Bellamy_…"

"Who cares what he thinks, Clarke? Don't worry about him."

"No, Finn, he was a good guy. He saved my life so many times and I couldn't save him." She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyelids, trying to stop herself from tearing up again. "I just let him die!"

There was a moment of silence on the headset and then Finn said in a confused and vaguely irritated voice, "No you didn't. He's fine."

"What?" She picked her head up and stared at his tiny figure on the screen. His arms were folded across his chest and he was frowning slightly.

"Bellamy's not dead, so don't bother pretending like he was some great hero."

"Oh, God! Where is he?" Clarke looked back and forth between Finn and Mary as a massive surge of endorphins released all of the tension in her body. Suddenly she felt as if she could fight her way out of Mount Weather with bare hands.

"He's… around."

"Tell me everything, Finn! We're safe. Nobody else is going to hear any of this."

He glanced towards the camera and Clarke knew that he was considering his next words very carefully. He wasn't sure they were safe. _She_ wasn't sure, but what else could she do? After a heavy sigh, he finally said, "I need to get out of this room, as early as possible tomorrow morning. There's a ventilation fan I need to turn off. And then we have to get all of our people into the hangar."

"The hangar?" Clarke looked up at Mary and put her hand over the headset's microphone. "What is that?"

"The big hall with the murals," she said. "We call it the chapel now."

Finn was oblivious to Mary's presence. "Yeah, it's a big room on the top level. Can we get everyone there?"

"I don't even think I can get _you_ out of quarantine, Finn. There are still about twenty of us locked up down there and Raven is stuck in the hospital…"

"How is she? Can she walk?" There was a desperate quaver in his voice.

"She'll be able to walk eventually, but not by tomorrow. I guess I'll have to figure something out…" she bit her bottom lip and exchanged a look with Mary. "Where's this fan you need to turn off? Maybe I can do it for you."

"I don't know, Clarke, it's kinda complicated. The fan is connected to the machine that pumps the acid fog, on the top level of the engineering building."

Mary gripped Clarke's shoulder and said, "I can do it, Clarke. I know exactly what he's talking about. Tell him we can turn it off tonight. Right now. As soon as we leave here."

"Is someone there with you?" Finn asked, sitting up a little straighter, his eyes flicking around the room as he strained to listen.

"Yeah," Clarke said, "an ally. Someone we can trust. She says she knows where the fan is and she wants to go turn it off now."

"Clarke…" Finn sounded frustrated. She could see his hands gripping the edge of the bed nervously. "I hope you know what you're doing. Once that fan turns off, it's gonna happen. We have to get _everyone_ into the hangar by tomorrow noon. There won't be any going back. No second chances."

Mary nodded at Clarke, squeezing her shoulder hard. "Just promise to take me with you when you go," the clone whispered.

"Okay," Clarke said to both of them. "Tomorrow noon. I'll make it work."

**Thelonious**

The tip of the feather made a violent scratching sound as Keaton frantically recorded Thelonious's words into his notebook. Every few lines, the Englishman would pause to dip the feather in a little pot of ink. Thelonious expected the feather to snap under the pressure of Keaton's scribbling at any moment, but it lasted through his entire life story: childhood on the Ark, working his way up to Chancellor, the 100 and how the Ark finally came down to the ground.

Keaton asked a million little questions, but his reactions were subdued and unreadable. It wasn't until they were caught up to the present and Thelonious was replenishing the moisture in this throat with a cup of hot tea that Keaton really started to respond.

"So…" he said, flipping back through the pages of his book, "there's quite a lot in here that we should probably speak about."

Thelonious took another hefty swig of tea and gave Keaton a pained look over the rim of the cup. He'd been talking for hours and he was sick of the sound of his own voice.

"But we can come back to it later, I suppose," Keaton said with a shrug. "I feel like an arse interrogating the king of an entire civilization like this anyway."

"_Chancellor_. I was democratically elected."

"Fair enough. But until a month ago, you believed you were the leader of the entire fucking human race."

"I'm happy to be wrong."

Keaton raised his own cup of tea and the two men shared a smile. "Cheers to that!"

"So you've seen survivors in _all_ the places you've traveled to, Keaton?"

"Oh, yeah," he said, swallowing down the tea. "The planet's fucking _lousy_ with 'em. Not so much close to the big cities, but most everywhere else. Animals, too. I saw an elephant with a forked trunk in India."

"That's… gross."

"Oh, that's the craziest part of all of this: the mutations. There's people out there that aren't even _human_ anymore. Like, _literally_. Not just some aesthetic differences like an extra arm or leg here and there. I mean they can't _reproduce_ with human beings because their bloody _genes_ have changed too much."

"Did you find any established societies?"

"Not like whole countries, no. It's more like tribes or maybe city-states, at best. The Shaolin Temple here is pretty unusual in that it's a community preserved from _before_ the last war. Normally what you see is people whose ancestors sort of clumped together for survival. Hunters and gatherers and the like. Of course, I never _saw_ what's happened in Africa, so for all I know they could have escaped the fucking bombs entirely and be living in luxury with electricity and diamond-encrusted mansions…"

"Why didn't you go to Africa?"

"I _tried_, for sure. I got about as far as the pyramids and then I realized the Sahara is fucking _huge_ and it just wasn't going to happen."

"The pyramids are still there?"

"More or less, yeah. _Loads_ of people still live in the Nile River delta, you know. I guess they didn't get hit quite as hard as some of the other places."

Thelonious drew his legs up to his chest and folded his arms across his knees. Somehow hearing all of this made him excited and miserable at the same time. The people of the Ark – his _son_ – had suffered so much in space. All of the rationing, the political intrigue, all those people they _floated_… They should have been down here the whole time. For a moment, he imagined Wells following Keaton out into the desert, staring up at the silhouettes of the pyramids against a vivd blue sky.

"Are you alright, Chancellor?"

"Please don't call me that. It doesn't mean anything now."

Keaton's face twisted into a sympathetic frown. He carefully closed his notebook and started to pack up his feather and ink. "_Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing_."

"What?"

"Nothing. It's an old book." He leaned back from the table and took a deep breath. Thelonious could see the gears in his head turning as he ran his hands over his sunburnt face. "Jaha, why don't you come with me?"

"Come with you where?"

"Well, I was _planning_ on checking out Southeast Asia from here, but I think maybe it's more important for you to get back to your people."

They stared into each other's eyes as Thelonious searched for the words to say what he felt. There were too many conflicting emotions. Finally he just said, "They're far away."

Keaton smirked. "A few days ago, you were in _outer fucking space_. What's another ten-thousand miles?"

**Bellamy**

The stars seemed even brighter from high up on the mountain. They were so bright that Bellamy considered trying to read his book by their light. It would have been nice to have something to pass the time.

Christine was sleeping on the ground beside him, swaddled in furs. Her snoring was so loud Bellamy could hear her even over the incessant whooshing of the ventilation fan. It was unbelievably noisy and its vibrations in the ground were starting to make his ass go numb, but at least the heat coming off of the machinery kept them warm.

"Harper, Miller, Sterling, Clarke…" Bellamy started reciting his list of names. It felt different now that he knew they were close by, only separated from him by layers of rock. And if everything went to plan, he'd see them again in less than twelve hours.

"Are those the names of your friends?" Christine interrupted him suddenly, making him jump. Hadn't she been snoring not ten seconds ago?

"Uh, yeah. I didn't mean to wake you up."

"Don't worry about it," she said, awkwardly trying to sit up with all of her limbs still wrapped inside the fur blankets. She reminded Bellamy of a caterpillar. "Your shift is probably over soon anyway."

"I don't think I can sleep."

She finally managed to get herself into an upright position and stared at him hard with her huge, dark eyes. "You're a really sweet guy, aren't you? Underneath all that macho posturing."

_Oh, God_, he thought to himself as he laughed at her. _Here it comes_.

"Hey, I'm serious," she frowned. "It's obvious how much you care about those kids in there. You _love_ them."

"Yeah, yeah…"

"Why do you have to be so embarrassed about it? You're not embarrassed about loving your _sister_. So it's the same thing. You're lucky to have such a big family."

"I never wanted any of this, you know. I just wanted to protect Octavia. She's all I really care about, when it comes down to it."

For a moment, Bellamy's brain wandered off down the well-worn path of worrying about Octavia. She was still down there, hiding in the woods near the gate with the others. A few weeks ago he never would have been able to leave her like that. Now it seemed like he was letting her go every other day. Each time, it got a little bit easier. And if he wanted to be _really_ honest with himself, it didn't even bother him anymore that she was with Lincoln. _My mother would kill me…_

"So what happened?" Christine asked, pulling him out of his reverie. "Maybe you didn't _want_ to care about them, but you're risking your life for them now."

"Fuck if I know," he said, even though that wasn't true. The change had come over him so slowly that he couldn't pinpoint exactly when it happened, but he knew part of it had something to do with Clarke and her stupid insistence that Bellamy was worthwhile. And part of it was the feeling that he built something together with all of them, that there was a bond between them that no one else would ever fully understand.

He was about to try to explain it to Christine when a distant clang echoed from somewhere deep inside the ventilation shaft and the fan spun to a stop.

"Took him long enough," Bellamy said as he helped Christine break out of her blanket cocoon.

"Hey, at least he did it."

"How the hell are you gonna see what you're doing in the dark?"

She reached into her backpack and pulled out her utility belt and a huge coil of heavy rope. "Glow sticks, I guess."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," he said, taking one end of the rope while she fashioned the other end into a harness around her waist and hips in a system of sturdy knots. "Glow sticks? With all those chemical tanks and electrical wiring?"

"Let me worry about that," Christine said as they leaned down together to lift the metal vent cover. "You just make sure you hold up your end."

They stood for a minute, just looking at each other and taking deep breaths. Then Christine gave a sharp nod and pulled on her gloves and gas mask. She took one of the glow sticks, snapped it to activate the pale green light, and tucked the stick securely into her utility belt. With Bellamy wrapping the remaining length of the rope around his forearms and wrists, the woman carefully stepped backward into the ventilation shaft. As he let out the rope, she inched her way down until all he could see of her was the steadily receding light of the glow stick. When the rope was almost completely let out, Bellamy felt the tension go slack. Then there were three sharp tugs.

"Alright," Bellamy said to himself, settling back down to the ground and snuggling into the fur blankets. They were still warm from Christine's body heat. "If she's back up by dawn, we're in good shape."

He tied the loose end of the rope around his wrist so he would feel it when she sent the signal for him to pull her back up. Then he closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep. Maybe if he was lucky, he could get a little rest before the next phase of the plan. He was definitely going to need it.

**Abby**

The building Phillip and Emma pointed out to her wasn't far from their own home, right in the densest part of the camp. Of course Nygel would hide in plain sight like she had done on the Ark. It was made primary out of sheets of metal taken from the wreckage of Tesla station. There were violent scorch marks streaking most of the surfaces. Up on the roof was a spot where the snow was brushed away to reveal a small set of scavenged solar panels and a nest of wiring.

Abby slid the heavy metal door just far enough to the side so that she could squeeze through. Inside, a handful of people sat in a circle on the floor playing poker by the glow of a space heater. As soon as Abby inched inside, their heads shot up like frightened animals. One of them paused with a bottle of moonshine halfway to his lips.

"Relax, I come in peace," she said, holding up her hands. _What a jumpy bunch of weirdoes_, she thought. _This is definitely the right place_.

"What do you want?" A burly guy asked from his post near a curtained doorway in the back of the room.

"I need to talk to Nygel."

"Nygel? We don't know anyone by that…"

"Dr. Griffin," Nygel's voice drifted out from behind the curtain to cut the man off, "I was wondering if I'd ever have the pleasure of your company again."

The poker game resumed and Abby walked forward, giving the bouncer a smug look. As he stepped out of the way to let her through the curtain, he rolled his eyes at her.

Beyond the curtain, Nygel was sitting at a tall desk. An electric light dangled from the ceiling and cast a sickly fluorescent spotlight on her phony smile as she motioned for Abby to sit on the chair across from her. Behind Nygel were shelves stacked high with all kinds of junk that had apparently been salvaged from the space stations. None of it looked immediately valuable, but Abby imagined that anything _really_ good was hidden more carefully, back in the darker reaches of the room.

"Hello, Nygel. Nice to see you landed on your feet."

"Likewise, Dr. Griffin." The other woman grinned like a shark.

"You know, I haven't seen you since our trade for that pressure regulator," Abby said, raising an accusatory eyebrow.

"How'd that work out for you, by the way? I hear my little bird Raven used it to get to the ground…"

"She did, actually. Without her, we never would have known that it was safe to come down," Abby's voice started to break up as she spoke and for a moment she thought she saw a flash of regret in Nygel's eyes. Everyone knew what happened by now. Everyone in camp knew about the empty drop ship and the burned bodies and the graveyard.

"Little bird was brave."

"Yeah… Do you remember what I traded you for that pressure regulator?"

"Morphine, right?" Nygel teased with a slow smile. "You got into a little trouble with the law over that one, if I remember correctly."

Abby gritted her teeth and let it go. It didn't matter now, anyway. "Yes. Morphine," she said. "And now I'm regretting that decision. I had to amputate a kid's leg a few days ago and I'm almost out of painkillers."

"Oh yeah?"

"Look, Nygel," Abby scooted to the edge of the chair so she could lean in close to the other woman. "It's the dead of winter, it'll be months before the Greens can synthesize any new drugs. I have nothing to trade you right now, but I _swear_ when Phillip and Emma are up and running again…"

Nygel threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, Dr. Griffin. You're adorable!"

Anger flared up inside her so quickly that Abby felt like her cheeks were on fire. She had to take a deep breath and reminder herself that she this was exactly the reaction she expected from Nygel. Appealing to Nygel's empathy and sense of responsibility to their struggling community was always a long shot, but it was worth trying, wasn't it?

"Alright," she said as Nygel's giggling fit subsided. "I understand. You don't care about the preventable suffering of a child. Just don't expect me to come back with another offer when I _do_ have something you'd like to trade."

Abby stood up and glared down her nose at Nygel for a moment before making a move to leave. But as she did, Nygel pulled a pistol from under her desk and aimed it at the center of Abby's chest. The cold, metallic sound of the hammer pulling back sent a chill up her spine.

"Don't go, Dr. Griffin," Nygel said. "I can't stand to let you leave here thinking that I'm some sort of monster who doesn't care about the children."

Raising her hands slowly and deliberately, Abby sank back down onto the wooden chair. Nygel's eyes glittered maliciously as she watched her.

"I don't _have_ any morphine," she continued, "or any other painkillers. In fact, I don't have _anything_ truly valuable. But now I have _you_, don't I?" Raising her voice, she called out to the bouncer on the other side of the curtain: "Callen, get in here."

As the man came in and started tying her up, Abby felt more pissed off than scared. She was pissed off at herself most of all. Why would she think that Nygel _wouldn't_ do something like this? They weren't on the Ark anymore. There was no risk of getting floated, no rules, no nothing. Kane had seen this coming and Abby had blown him off.

"You know, for a surgeon, you can be pretty stupid sometimes," Nygel said once Abby was firmly secured to the chair. "A great brain for science, but real fuckin' dumb about people. It's almost like you think that, deep down, people are _good_."

"I'm smart enough to know that whatever you're trying to do here isn't going to work, Nygel. Kane isn't going to just let you…"

"Kane?!" Nygel cut her off with a laugh. She motioned to Callen and the man reached down to tie a cloth gag around Abby's mouth. "Are you kidding me? Kane's not here. He's off playing spy games in the woods. But when he finally comes home, I bet he'll be willing to trade just about _anything_ to get his precious doctor back."


	10. Chapter 10

**Bellamy**

The sky was starting to turn pink in the east when Bellamy woke to a sharp tugging at his wrist. He got up, went to the ventilation shaft, and started the work of pulling Christine out. Still groggy from not getting a good night's sleep, it was slow going and his shoulders burned from the effort. The pain in his ribs was coming back with a vengeance. Finally, Christine's arms were close enough for Bellamy to grab and yank her up onto the surface.

"Oh fuck," he gasped, lapsing into a coughing fit.

Christine knelt, pulled off her gas mask, and started wiping at her clothes. Big flakes of dirt and dust fell from her like black snow. "It's disgusting down there."

"You got it done?"

"Yeah… I think so." She had carried a fistful of multicolored wiring up out of the machine. He watched her carefully organize the wires on the ground, weighing the ends down with rocks to keep them from slipping back down the shaft.

_You think so?_ Bellamy's mind boggled, but he was too bushed to challenge her on it. Sure, they might all die slow, painful deaths in the acid fog if she made any mistakes. But don't worry. She _thinks_ she was successful.

Still struggling to breathe, he followed her up the mountain a short distance to their lookout point. On the way up the mountain, Bellamy had been completely shocked by the view and now, seeing it again, he was still shaking his head. There was a large plateau far below them where a platoon of men in gas masks and green jumpsuits were running drills. There were buildings too, including a massive greenhouse and something that looked like a stable.

"I can't believe all this shit was here the whole time…"

"You just never got close enough to see it. There's all those Reapers down by the river, waiting for their next meal like a pack of wild dogs. _And_ the acid fog. Pretty good security system."

Bellamy looked for the distant spot in the woods where his sister was lurking with Lincoln and the others, bows at the ready. He couldn't see them, but he knew they were there. And he knew that they were all waiting for him to trigger the next part of the attack.

"This would all be so much easier if we still had Raven's radios," he said.

"What are you talking about?" Christine asked, giving him a mildly horrified look.

"Raven built us radios out of spare parts so we could communicate during the Grounder attack. Too bad they all got melted in the fire."

"Holy shit…" Christine shook her head gently and laughed. "That's how they got you!"

"What? Who?"

"The Mountain Men. They were listening to everything you guys said. The airwaves are _their_ turf."

"Oh, perfect."

"You didn't know," she said, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. When Bellamy rolled his eyes, she grabbed ahold of his sleeve and pulled him back down hill toward the ventilation shaft. "Come on. Get your stuff and let's get on with this already. Everybody's waiting for you!"

**Clarke**

She still hadn't slept when the usual wake-up music started blasting through the dormitory. (Eusebius had finally explained to her what the tune was a few days before: _The Star-Spangled Banner_.)

Harper and the other girls groaned, dragging themselves out of bed slowly, but Clarke was up like a bolt. She went to her drawer of personal belongings and put on every article of clothing she had: the white undershirt and shorts, her old jeans and shirt from the Ark, and then her new cargo pants, bulky sweater, and boots as the top layer. _Ugh, I'm gonna be sweating my ass off all morning_, she thought. The most she could hope for was that it wasn't too obvious.

"Hey, dress warm today," she said to her roommates as she was heading out the door. "I have a feeling it's gonna get cold."

"Uh…" Harper started, a baffled look on her face, but Clarke was already gone and away down the hallway before she could formulate a reply.

Clarke went straight to the mess hall to find Eusebius eating his oatmeal and reading from a book with gold-edged pages. Throwing herself down in the chair next to him, she reached forward, grabbed his wrist, and said breathlessly, "Eusebius, I have to talk to you."

He flinched at the unexpected interruption, fumbling his spoon and smearing oatmeal into his tidy beard. "Clarke, dear, you'll give me a stroke. What on Earth is it?"

"I had a vision last night. Like Saint John," she said and saw Eusebius's eyes light up. "I was walking in a snowy forest. I found a golden tree with burning leaves and the sun was directly overhead, lighting the whole thing up. I knew right away that I was in the presence of God."

Eusebius was eating it up, nodding slowly and staring into her eyes. "Did He speak to you?"

"Yes! I heard a voice like the sound of rushing waters say 'let him that hath an ear, hear what the Spirit sayeth unto the Churches.' And then I turned around and saw the other kids – all the kids who came down from the Ark with me – standing behind me and watching. I opened my mouth to talk to them and when I spoke, it wasn't _my_ voice. It was God's. And He said to them, _through_ my mouth, 'repent thyself, or else I will come unto thee shortly.' Then the snow melted away and the kids fell down to their knees, crying with happiness and praising God."

"Clarke, you are truly blessed," Eusebius sighed, holding on to her hands. "How do you interpret this vision?"

"Well, when I woke up, I was struck with an idea. Obsessed with it, actually. I need to be baptized today in the chapel and we have to bring all of the kids there to watch it happen. I think if we do that, then we can convert the remaining non-believers. I think it's the only way."

For a second, Clarke thought Eusebius might cry. He squeezed her hands so tight that his heavy emerald ring pinched into her skin. "Yes, Clarke."

"Can you help me? Do you think we can get them all together in the chapel today?"

"Of course! I'll start arranging it right away."

"But I got the definite sensation that it needs to happen today, at _noon_. And it has to be _everybody_. Everyone from quarantine. Raven, Anya, all of the kids that came here with me. Promise me you'll do it."

"Thy will be done," Eusebius said, looking up at the ceiling, presumably to God. He kissed the back of Clarke's hand and then stood to go.

"Eusebius," Clarke stopped him and waived a finger at her chin. "You have oatmeal in your beard."

**Bellamy**

The woods were completely silent except for the sound of Bellamy's rasping breath against the high collar of his parka. His hands were shaking from nerves and from the cold of the snow as he set up the claymores. He had arranged three mines in a daisy chain, hidden in snowy underbrush. All he had left to do was unroll the wires, get to a safe distance and wait for the big bomb to go off. The rest of it would be out of his control. Octavia would be out of his control…

_Don't think about it_, he told himself. _Focus. Do your job and they'll all be okay_.

Walking backwards, he unrolled the tripwire about as far as he could. When he stopped backing up, he caught the sound of footsteps crunching in the snow behind him. Bellamy whipped around to see a group of five men with rifles trained on him. He knew right away they weren't Mountain Men troops because there were no green jumpsuits or gas masks.

"Bellamy Blake!" one of them called out, sounding almost as surprised as Bellamy felt. "Drop it and put your hands up!"

Never taking his eyes of the men, he slowly crouched down to place the detonator on the ground then stood back up with both hands in the air. As they inched closer, Bellamy realized they were from the Ark. One of them was Councilman Kane. Another was a guy named Rush who had been with Bellamy in cadet training.

"Alright," Kane said. "You're coming with us."

**Clarke**

Standing on the low stage at the front of the chapel, Clarke tried to give a confident smile to the delinquents. There were only about thirty of them sitting in the first few rows. Most of them had never been in the chapel before and were staring up at the apocalyptic scenes painted all over the ceiling and walls.

In the middle of the front row Jasper smiled up at Clarke and Eusebius patiently, his hands clasped together in his lap. Monty sat just behind and stared at the side of Jasper's face, looking nauseous with concern. A few rows back, Miller and Monroe were whispering together. Clarke felt a little less nervous when Miller made eye contact with her and gave her an almost imperceptible nod. At least _he_ realized what was up.

"Eusebius," Clarke said under her breath, "this isn't everybody. Where are the others? I told you it had to be everyone."

He put a hand on the back of her shoulder and said, "It will be done. They're bringing the rest of them up from quarantine right now."

Right on cue, a group of Jospeh and Mary clones lead the remaining delinquents into the chapel through one of the side doors. As they started filing into the benches, Clarke noted with relief that they'd all been allowed to wear their clothes from the Ark instead of the white quarantine outfits. None of them looked warm enough to survive long in the snow outside, but it was better than nothing. They could figure it all out once they escaped.

Finn was one of the last few through the door. As far as Eusebius knew, Clarke still believed Finn was dead, so she would have to do a bit of acting here.

"Finn!" she gasped, gripping Eusebius's sleeve. "What… _How_?"

Before Eusebius could stop her, she jumped down from the stage and ran to him. Finn met her halfway and they collided in a bear hug. As Clarke felt her feet leave the floor, Finn buried his face in her hair and whispered in a rush: "When the alarm goes off, everybody needs to run down that big hallway at the back and get outside. Don't worry about the acid fog. We disabled it."

She pulled back and their eyes locked together for a long moment. Up close, she could see the angry spot on the left side of his face where the fire had almost gotten to him and she felt a wave of self-doubt. Were they here now in this desperate situation because of _her_? Because of her bad decisions and failed leadership?

"Clarke Griffin!" a familiar voice caught her attention. She turned her head to see Silas Wheeler bringing up the rear of the group, pushing Raven in her wheelchair. The old man was smiling, but a glint in his eyes told her to be wary as he said, "Eusebius told me the good news and I'm here to witness the miracle for myself."

**Bellamy**

"You're making a mistake," Bellamy said quietly, not moving a muscle.

There was uncertainty on Kane's face as he glanced down at the detonator for the claymores near Bellamy's feet. When he looked back up at Bellamy again, he clenched his teeth and sighed.

"Wick," he said to one of his men, "Can you defuse those mines?"

"No, you can't!" Bellamy raised his voice, pleading with his eyes as Wick came towards him. It was enough to make Wick pause and look back at Kane for instructions. "Please just let me explain. Jaha pardoned me…"

"You know that's not what this is about," Kane said, cutting him off. Then he nodded at Wick. "Go on."

"No! You don't know what you're doing!" Bellamy stepped into Wick's path and all the men tensed up on their rifles. "It'll be very bad for all of us if you do that."

"It's too late, Blake," Kane said, "Doctor Griffin found John Murphy. We know what you did."

"What? What the fuck?" Bellamy furrowed his brow in confusion. _Doctor Griffin?_ "You know Murphy's a fucking liar, right? Just… look. There's a bomb up there on the ridge and it's gonna go off any minute and if you guys don't take cover, we're about to be in the middle of a firefight."

Kane smirked and lowered his rifle slightly. "And of course we'll just take a traitor's word for it."

"Jaha _pardoned_ me. I've been working my ass off taking care of these kids down here and all you care about is…"

"Save it, Blake. We know you betrayed the hundred. Take care of them?" Kane scoffed. "You got them all killed."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Bellamy shrugged, his hands still held up by his head. "They're not dead. They're in Mount Weather. I was _trying_ to rescue them, but then _you_ assholes…"

BOOM! Bellamy dropped to his stomach in the snow and covered his head as the ridge behind Kane's men exploded. As bits of burning wood and ashes fell on them and their concentration was broken, Bellamy reached for the detonator and crawled as fast as he could to duck behind a snowy bush.

"Get down!" Bellamy shouted at them. "Find a hiding place and shut the fuck up. They're coming!"

"Who?" Kane shouted back as he and his men scrambled for cover.

"The Mountain Men!"

**Clarke**

Wheeler took Clarke by the arm and led her up onto the stage. Eusebius was still standing there by the basin of holy water, but he stepped aside as Wheeler approached.

"Children!" Wheeler addressed the delinquents in his most resonant voice. "This morning, your sister Clarke Griffin has experienced a miracle!"

She could hardly listen to him. Even just standing near him made her skin scrawl. Looking out at the delinquents, Fox, Olivier, Megan, Lennox, and Robert were conspicuously absent. _He's a murderer_, Clarke thought, _he fed them to the cannibals_. But Finn was there. And Raven sitting next to him, rolling her eyes. Monty, Jasper, Miller… even Anya. They were all going to walk out of there in only a few minutes.

Wheeler called for a prayer and he and Eusebius bowed their heads. But weirdly, Clarke noticed, the clones standing along the wall seemed distracted. One of them held a small radio to his ear and was whispering frantically to the others. Something was going on…

"Amen," Wheeler finished his prayer.

Just then, the acid fog alarm went off. Wheeler looked up at the speakers in the ceiling, then over at Eusebius who shook his head helplessly. As all of the doors around the edge of the chapel slid shut and the air lock leading to the exit tunnel opened, Clarke watched the realization dawning on their faces: someone had hijacked the system.

"Everybody follow me!" Finn shouted to the kids, standing up and lifting Raven out of her wheelchair. "Let's go!"

From that moment on, things seemed to move in slow motion for Clarke. As the clones lurched forward to stop the kids, she reached into her cargo pocket for the broken bowl. Grabbing Wheeler around the shoulders, she pulled him off balance enough to hold him tight and press the sharp edge of the glass against his throat.

"Joseph, Mary! Stop!" she called out to the clones. They froze in place. Eusebius too. She dragged Wheeler along as she followed after the kids towards the back of the room. "You're gonna let us go or Wheeler gets it."

Jasper was still sitting in the front row, his face a mask of total shock. Monty grabbed his arm and was pleading with him, but Clarke couldn't hear what he was saying over the sound of the alarm and the general noise of the kids as they ran.

"Clarke," Wheeler hissed into her ear, "You can run away now, but the Lord will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour He will come upon thee."

"Yeah, well, I'm willing to take that chance," she said.

They were just through the air lock to the long hallway that led up to the surface. Most of the kids were already away down the tunnel, running towards the light and the freezing air, but Monty was still coaxing Jasper along and Clarke stopped to wait for them. One of the Mary clones came running up behind them and helped Monty lift Jasper off the ground. As they carried him, kicking and screaming, Clarke recognized the scar on Mary's eyebrow. The clone flashed her a brief smile as they passed by her and ran up the tunnel.

They were in the clear, but for a moment Clarke just stood there, holding onto Wheeler. She wasn't sure what to do with him. Eusebius walked towards them with his hands held up and said, "I was right about everything, wasn't I, Clarke?"

"You're a fool, Eusebius," Wheeler rasped. Clarke tightened her grip.

"This isn't you, Clarke," Eusebius pressed on, "This is Bellamy Blake controlling you. He turned you into a violent, _wicked_ person you never wanted to be. Let him go, Clarke. Repent and come back to us. Be saved!"

The air lock started to close. Seeing Fox, Olivier, Megan, Lennox, and Robert in her mind, Clarke drew the glass across Wheeler's throat. He made a pitiful choking sound as bright red blood spilled out over Clarke's hands. "Fucking murderers," she whispered and shoved Wheeler back towards Eusebius just before the air lock sealed them in.

Shaking with adrenaline, Clarke turned and ran up the tunnel towards the light.

**Bellamy**

"Look. There!" Kane whispered, pointing ahead into the trees.

At first Bellamy didn't see what he was talking about, but then a whole troop of Mountain Men in green jumpsuits came marching towards them, rifles at the ready. Bellamy's hand hovered over the clacker, waiting for them to come into range.

"Who the fuck are they?" Wick asked.

"Shut up! Shut up!" Kane said quietly through gritted teeth. He was lying in the snow only a few feet away from Bellamy, watching the enemy approach through the sight of his gun. "You'd better be right about this, Blake, or it's your head."

"Shhhhh!"

When they were close enough for Bellamy to see the flames from the explosion reflecting off of their gas masks, he mashed the heel of his hand down on the detonator. The first mine exploded, sending shrapnel spraying forward into the oncoming men. There was screaming and a lot smoke, but some of the Mountain Men pressed forward anyway, firing their rifles indiscriminately into the woods.

Kane and his men started firing back while Bellamy hit the clacker again and the second claymore detonated. There weren't many Mountain Men left after that. One more mine to go, but Bellamy waited for the smoke to clear out a bit so he could see what he was dealing with.

"Three more behind that tree!" someone said.

_Which tree?_ Bellamy thought as another burst of gunfire broke out. A bullet whizzed past his neck, just barely grazing him. It burned like a horrible paper cut and he felt a warm trickle of blood run down to his collarbone.

BAM! He detonated the third claymore and the shooting stopped. When the ringing in his ears faded, he realized with infinite relief that it was over.

Kane sat up on his knees, craning his neck to get a look at the carnage. He turned to Bellamy with angry eyes and said, "Are you going to explain what the hell is going on here?"

"I already told you. We're busting the kids out of Mount Weather. We had to draw the soldiers away from the gate while they escaped."

"So they're all alive?"

"There were only sixty of them when they got captured. We lost a lot of people fighting with the Grounders before the Mountain Men came. But that prick Murphy is definitely lying to you," Bellamy stood up and wiped at his bloody neck. "I need to get to the rendezvous point… Or _we_ need to get to the rendezvous point, I guess. You said Clarke's mom is alive? How many of you are there?"

"About seventy in a camp south of here," Kane said, brushing snow off of his shirt. "But there may be more of us out there. We don't know where all the Ark stations landed."

As he spoke, an enormous cloud of thick, white fog spewed out of the side of the mountain. Kane's men started to panic. "Acid fog!"

"No, no," Bellamy said, "We fixed it. One of our people fucked up the machine. It's harmless. Just water vapor."

As if to confirm his story, snow started to fall on them. Bellamy grinned up at the sky and when he looked down again, he caught Kane giving him a curious look. _He still doesn't trust me_, Bellamy thought, his smile melting away. But maybe seeing the kids alive and well would help with that.

"Come on. Let's go."

**Clarke**

"Let's go, Clarke! Come on. The gate's gonna close!" Finn yelled at her as she jogged up the tunnel. He was silhouetted against the gleaming white of the snow outside.

When her eyes adjusted to the light, the scene she saw was a bit of a shock. Joseph clones were lying all over the ground, looking like pincushions with arrows sticking out of them at odd angles. Octavia was on horseback with Raven, herding the kids away from the gate and down the side of the mountain. Lincoln and some Grounders Clarke didn't recognize were also on horses, speaking with Anya.

"Finn, this is incredible," Clarke said, stopping to catch her breath. "How did all of this happen? What about our footprints in the snow? Won't they just follow us?"

"No, Christine rigged it so that the gate will jam up when it closes. It should slow them down long enough for us to make a getaway."

"Who's Christine? And where's Bellamy?"

"I told you. He's around. We're meeting them at the rendezvous point."

As they walked down the steep slope into the woods, a heavy white cloud rolled across the sky and chunky snowflakes started to fall. The kids were laughing and running now, throwing snow at each other despite the cold. Clarke ignored her own shivering and lifted her hands up to catch the flakes. That's when she and Finn both noticed her hands were coated in blood.

"Clarke…" he said, looking horrified, "what did you do?"

"I did what needed to be done."

They fell into an awkward silence and after a few minutes, Finn made an excuse and jogged ahead to speak with the Grounders. She could feel his unspoken judgment weighing on her even after he was gone.

Clarke slowed down a bit and let the rest of the group pull ahead of her. Looking back over her shoulder, the gate leading into the mountain was already out of sight and the falling snow was starting to cover over their footprints. They was leaving it all behind at last, but what would they do next? Where would they go?

The group disappeared into a little valley ahead of her and she picked up the pace again so she wouldn't lose them entirely. Just then she noticed a handful of men with guns up ahead. They were coming down the mountain from the side, apparently chasing after the caravan of kids in the valley. She froze in place and watched them draw closer. There were only six of them…

_Bellamy!_ Clarke opened her mouth to call out to him, but her voice caught in her throat. For a second, she almost didn't recognize him because was wearing a long, heavy coat and his hair seemed fluffier than she remembered it. The wind lifted it from his forehead as he paused on the hillside, hanging onto a tree branch with one hand.

Then he saw her.

"Clarke!"


	11. Chapter 11

**Bellamy**

"Clarke!"

Bellamy broke away from Kane and his men and rushed toward her, kicking up powdery snow as he slid down the slope. He heard someone call out, "Wait!" behind him, but he ignored it.

She was struggling to get up the hill and before he could reach her, she face-planted into a snow bank. Bellamy skidded to a stop on his knees and picked her up by her arms. Trying not to laugh in her face, he brushed the snow out of her eyes. "Hey, Princess. You taking a walk in the woods?"

"Bellamy…" Clarke said, sounding embarrassed and annoyed. Bellamy was focusing on combing clumps of snow out of her hair when she grabbed onto his wrists. His quiet chuckling subsided and they sat like that for a moment, just staring at each other with her head in his hands. Then Clarke frowned and reached out to touch the cut on his neck. "You're hurt."

"It's nothing," he winced, pulling away from the sting of her touch.

"And you're sick! God, you sound awful…"

"Yeah? What about you? What's all this blood?"

She folded her arms across her chest so that her stained hands were hidden. With a lift of her chin and a defiant flash in her eyes, she said, "It's not mine."

"Oh." Bellamy quirked an eyebrow at her. "You're gonna have to tell me about that later because I have some news…"

"Blake!" One of Kane's men shouted. "Let's go!"

Clarke squinted at them over Bellamy's shoulder as he pulled her to her feet. He watched her face, seeing the exact moment when she recognized Kane. "They're from the Ark, aren't they?"

"Yeah, that's what I need to talk to you about." He stepped in closer, grabbing onto her elbow and inclining his head toward her. "Clarke, they say your mom is alive."

"What?" Clarke froze.

"She came down with the rest of the Ark. There's like seventy of them," he said, trying to read her expression. What was she thinking? What was she feeling? A snowflake landed on her nose and she blinked. When her eyes opened again, they were filled with tears. "Hey, don't cry. It's too cold for crying. These are _happy_ tears, right?"

"I think so," she whispered. "It's just… a lot."

"Blake! Now!"

Bellamy widened his eyes at Clarke in silent frustration and she answered with a wry laugh. That was a little bit better, but she was still sniffling and shivering from the cold. He shrugged out of his parka and shoved it into her arms before turning to catch up with Kane. "Put this on."

"But you're sick," he heard her say as she trudged along behind him.

"No time to argue, Princess. We're on the march."

As they approached, Kane stepped forward and wrapped his arm around the girl's shoulders. "It's good to see you again, Clarke! How are you feeling?" he asked, pulling her away from the other men and leaning in to speak more confidentially.

_Of course_, Bellamy thought, watching their backs as they walked a few paces ahead, just out of earshot. _Of course she already knows all of these government assholes._ There was a reason why he started calling her Princess in the first place and he had almost forgotten about it. Almost.

"Oh man, she is _beautiful_," Wick said under his breath.

Bellamy grinned. "Yeah, but she's a ballbuster."

"Did you ever, uh…"

"With Clarke? No."

"Blake could never get _her_," Rush cut in, scoffing. "He was a goddamn janitor up on the Ark."

"Shut the fuck up, Rush. You know why I got stuck with that shit. And in case you hadn't noticed, we're not _on_ the Ark anymore."

"Dude, you haven't seen Teslatown yet. Same shit as always, just on the Ground."

"The fuck is Teslatown?"

"That's what they're calling the new camp," Wick said. "It's mostly built out of pieces of Tesla Station. It's really starting to come together, actually…"

"Yeah, it's working out _great_," Rush interrupted, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "If you play your cards right, Blake, you might get a sweet job shoveling snow. You might have been the king of the juvenile delinquents before, but you're nothing now."

Bellamy pointedly ignored Rush and kept his eyes focused on the back of Clarke's blonde head. _It doesn't matter_, he told himself. _You came down here to keep Octavia safe. None of this other shit matters_. But then Clarke looked back over her shoulder at him for a quick moment and he was struck with an emotion he didn't fully understand. His anxiety about the rescue mission had passed, leaving only a deep sense of loss. Like an important part of his life was ending forever.

**Abby**

She slipped in and out of consciousness for an indeterminate amount of time. It could have been hours or it could have been days. She just didn't know. The lighting in the backroom of Nygel's cabin didn't change with the sun. There was only the electric bulb hanging from the ceiling, sometimes on, sometimes off. Callen, Nygel's henchman, had come in a couple of times to give her water and let her use a plastic canister as a latrine, but Nygel herself wasn't around. When she wasn't trying to sleep through the extreme discomfort of being tied to a rickety wooden chair, Abby ran over the possibilities in her head.

Scenario number one: she could escape on her own somehow. She'd have to get untied first. Callen let her out of the chair for her bathroom breaks, but always kept her hands tied together. And he had a gun so fighting him wasn't a good option. Maybe instead she could shimmy against the chair enough to break through the ropes. But then what? She'd walk through the curtain and there would be Callen or some other guard with a gun in her face. No, Abby was going to need outside help to escape.

Scenario two: she could scream for help. Even if she could get the gag out of her mouth – and she was pretty sure she could if she really tried – the first person to respond to her screams would definitely be Callen. At best, he could just put the gag back in her mouth, maybe a little tighter. But at worst, he could pistol whip her until she couldn't make any noise at all. Still Abby considered that maybe it was worth the gamble. The insulation in Nygel's walls was pretty thick, but if she could get in one really good scream, then at least _somebody_ outside might hear her and come to her rescue. But what would her rescuer do? They would knock on the door to the cabin and say they heard screaming. And then Callen could just as easily say, "no, you didn't" and that would be the end of that.

Scenario three: her friends would come looking for her. Jackson and Anita surely would have noticed that she was missing by now. Especially if she had been gone for more than a day, like she suspected. Abby hadn't told them she was going to Nygel because she was embarrassed about it and didn't want to get them involved. But they did know that she had visited the Greens, so that would probably be the first place they looked. Hopefully the Greens would remember suggesting Nygel to Abby and then they could put the pieces together. This was the most likely scenario. In fact, Abby was confident that this scenario was already playing out. She was just going to have to wait for them to come for her.

But once they figured out where she was, that didn't solve the problem of _how_ they were going to get her out of there. Jackson and Anita didn't have any firepower and definitely lacked the kind of cunning necessary to perform some kind of covert rescue mission, even _with_ help from Phillip and Emma Green.

Nygel wanted to make a trade, so maybe they could negotiate. But what did they have? Surgical tools? Erlenmeyer flasks? A rapidly dwindling supply of iodine? Considering the risk she was taking by holding the camp's only doctor hostage, Nygel was almost certainly looking for something extremely valuable…

Weapons. That had to be it. Nygel already had a pistol or two and if she could get her hands on the rifles, she could potential take control of the whole camp. So it seemed that she was waiting for the Mount Weather scouts to return. Kane would come back, Jackson would tell him Abby was being held hostage, and then he would have to decide whether or not to hand over the remaining guns to ensure her safety.

_I am an idiot_, Abby thought as she stared at the horrible fluorescent light. Maybe if she had just taken the time to think through all the scenarios _before_ she went to visit Nygel, none of this would be happening at all.

On the other side of camp, poor John Murphy was in unimaginable pain, angry at the world, wishing he were dead. And what had Abby done to help him? Nothing. Worse than nothing. Her reckless choice to trust a known villain was probably going to destroy the tentative peace their people had found on the Ground.

Her thoughts went to Thelonious. She had to admit that, in all likelihood, he never made it down. He probably suffocated in space or maybe he burned up in the atmosphere. What would he have done in this situation? What would he do if he walked into the camp today? Attack Nygel's cabin and hope that Abby didn't get killed in the process? Or maybe he would hand over all his power to that psycho just to save Abby's life. He loved her. She knew that. He would have saved her somehow.

Kane, on the other hand, had a more pragmatic view of her. She was a politician and a surgeon in his mind, a valuable member of society. In the best of times, Abby and Kane could be friends. He knew her family and he had been as upset as anyone when Jake was floated. Now it was Abby's life on the line and she had to trust him.

If Kane managed to save her, Abby knew that she should give in and agree to help him form a new government. She could see now that he was right about that, at least. Maybe it would be good for her. It was something familiar. Something she could use to occupy her time so that she wouldn't be able to dwell on everyone she'd lost.

_If I get out of here alive,_ she thought,_ I'm going to have to find something to live for._

**Clarke**

Kane and Bodie were deep in conversation at one of the campfires, their lieutenants sitting close by. There weren't enough warm clothes or many tents, but at least they were out of Reaper territory when they made camp for the night. The current plan was to just cram everybody into the tents and hope that the combined body heat would keep them all from freezing to death.

Clarke had to get all of this information from Octavia who, in turn, had heard it from Lincoln. Clarke was stuck at the next campfire over, trying to block out the banter of the kids around her so she could hear what the older men were saying. Every now and then, she would catch words like "resources" and "government" and it was driving her crazy.

She wondered if it bothered Bellamy at all: being sent back to the kiddie table. He didn't _seem_ angry, she thought as she watched him wander through the camp. He was stopping at every campfire, looking inside every tent. _Checking up on them_, she thought as she pulled his parka closer around her shoulders.

Clarke's gaze settled on the small circle where Finn sat with a group of singing Grounders. It was strange how music seemed like an unbelievable luxury to her now. And as she made eye contact with Finn, she thought maybe that was the upside to not being in charge anymore. She could afford the luxury of getting distracted again.

Without a word to Jasper and Monty, Clarke stood up and walked away from the firelight into the shadows of the trees. She didn't have to wait long before Finn found her. In the faint glow of the moon reflecting off the snow she couldn't quite read his expression, but she grabbed onto his coat and pulled him in for a ferocious kiss.

"Whoa, Clarke!" Finn grabbed onto her hands as she fumbled with his belt. "Slow down. Can't you just talk to me for a second first?"

"What do you want to talk about?" Clarke flapped her arms in frustration. "It's been a rough…month or two."

Finn inched closer and ran a hand through her hair. "I just want to understand what's happening with you. When I first met you, you were so noble. You stuck to your ideals. But now you're torturing people, burning them alive, slashing throats…"

The cold air seemed to sink into Clarke's chest and freeze her heart. "Damn, Finn, that's kinda…"

"No, I wanna talk this out. I think you need to work through this. You killed an old man in cold blood this morning."

"I don't believe this," Clarke said, batting his hand away from her hair and folding her arms across her chest defensively. She was starting to feel like she'd had this conversation before. "I have a responsibility to do what I think is best to protect our people."

"But aren't there other ways to do that? You always used to look for the other way – the _better_ way – but now it's like you've got Bellamy in your head telling you to go for the kill."

A chill ran up Clarke's spine as she realized where she'd heard this before. She was surprised she hadn't recognized it right away, considering it was all she'd heard for days in the white room. She'd heard it that morning. _Eusebius_. In the dark, she could almost imagine a huge emerald ring on Finn's hand as he reached out for her.

Apparently he couldn't see her scowling at him as he kept speaking, rubbing her arm. "I'm hoping now that the Ark is here, you'll stop listening to that dick Bellamy and get back to being the girl I fell in love with."

She felt sick to her stomach. "What if I don't _want_ to stop listening to 'that dick'? What if I trust him and value his point of view? Does that mean you won't love me anymore?"

"I don't understand why you always defend him. Why do you…"

"Just stop. I'm not going to turn my back on Bellamy for you, so forget it."

"Clarke!" He grabbed at her as she stepped backwards, but she ripped her hand out of his grasp and stomped away deeper into the woods.

In the darkness she stumbled past a tree, dragging her hand across its abrasive bark. Then her fingers suddenly encountered soft fabric and she realized there was a person leaning against the tree trunk. Clarke jumped, feeling her heart nearly stop. "Oh, God! Bellamy! How long have you been standing there?"

"I'm sorry," he said, touching her back as she doubled over in shock. "Octavia said you were out here. I needed to ask you about something and I heard Finn say my name…"

"Were you listening?"

Instead of answering her, Bellamy turned his head to watch Finn walk back to the campsite. Clarke studied Bellamy's profile and waited for him to speak. Finally he said, "Normally I would _not_ get involved in this bullshit, but you shouldn't break up with him over that."

Clarke snorted. "We were never together."

"Same difference," he said, coughing a little. "He didn't mean any of it. He's not upset with you. He just really hates me right now."

"More so than usual? What did you do?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

He shook his head at her, pressing his lips together in a grimace. When she prodded him in the arm, he just turned his eyes up to the sky and shrugged. Apparently he was committed to secrecy.

"Okay, fine. It's more complicated than that, anyway," Clarke sighed. "Bellamy, am I wrong to trust you? Are you actually a demon in disguise, leading me astray?" She said it like a joke, but a part of her really wanted to know.

Bellamy laughed until he was coughing again. "Probably not. If you asked me that six weeks ago, I might have said yes." He leaned back against the tree trunk and crossed his arms. "You made me believe I could be better. If you never trusted me… I don't know what I'd be without you."

Clarke's heart almost stopped again. How did he know that was exactly what she needed to hear? Tilting her head to one side, she regarded him with a contemplative frown. His folded arms were like a barricade and his jaw was clenched. _So closed off_, she thought. Before she could figure out what to say, he changed the subject.

"Anyway, I came out to find you because we're missing five people. Fox, Robert, Lennox, Olivier, and Megan. Do you know what happened to them?"

"Oh…" She blinked, blindsided by the sudden resurgence of that painful topic. She had told Kane the whole story earlier and hoped to move on from it, but Bellamy was still clueless. Her voice was flat and tired as she explained, "Wheeler had them killed. He fed them to the Reapers because he couldn't brainwash them."

Bellamy visibly deflated, shifting his hands to his hips with a sigh. "And Wheeler's the one you, uh…" he made a slicing gesture across his throat with his thumb.

"Yeah."

"Okay," he nodded. "Thank you for that."

After a beat of silence, Clarke looked into his eyes wearily. "Bellamy, what's going to happen to us? What comes next?"

He pushed himself away from the tree and stepped closer. Pulling the fur-lined hood of the parka up over her head, he said, "What's next? We get out of this freezing fucking forest and go sit by the fire before _both_ of us get pneumonia."

As they walked back to the camp together, a million questions swirled in her head. What was life going to be like now that the Ark was on the ground? What were they going to do about the Grounders? Were the people in Mount Weather going to come after them? Would they ever feel truly safe? Could Clarke go back to being her mother's little girl after everything that had happened?

**Thelonious**

They hiked back to Thelonious's shuttle to see if there was anything useful to take with them. Keaton rummaged around in under the hood, pulling out hardware and wires, stuffing things into his pockets, but ultimately decided there wasn't much there. Only the rip-stop parachute fabric seemed to be truly valuable to him.

The textbooks that Thelonious had packed were only going to weigh them down, so they kept the copy of the Earth Skills book just in case and then donated the rest of books to the monks at the Shaolin Temple. They were all in English, but Thelonious maintained that knowledge inside them – math, physics, chemistry, philosophy – was too precious to just leave in an abandoned heap of junk in the woods. The language barrier didn't seem to bother Shí Shān Bo either. The head monk took the heavy tomes with a dignified bow and put them in his antique cabinet.

Through another series of comic book-style drawings, they managed to explain to Shí Shān Bo where they were going and what they were trying to do. He responded with a long, incomprehensible monologue in Mandarin, looking deeply concerned. In the end, Thelonious and Keaton could only nod their heads, bow solemnly, and accept the package full of supplies the monks offered them.

Then they were on their way. The plan was to walk north to the Bering Strait. They would have to find some way to sail across. Hopefully they would find people living near Cape Dezhnev with boats. If not, they'd have to build a raft to get over to Alaska. Thelonious was worried about the weather, but Keaton was pretty confident that it would start warming up again soon.

"Besides," he had said, "It's a very long walk. We won't see Siberia for weeks."

Their first destination was Zhengzhou, less than twenty miles northeast of the Shaolin Temple. Thelonious remembered Ping saying "jeng joe" repeatedly when he left to find Keaton.

"I feel I have to warn you, Zhengzhou is not a very nice place," Keaton said as they walked. "A bit of a den of fucking vipers, if you know what I mean."

"If Zhengzhou is so dangerous, how do the monks manage to live so close to them in peace?"

Keaton laughed. "Nobody wants to fuck with the Shaolin, my friend. The villagers could try to come at the monks with their knives and such, but the Shaolin would kick their arses. Just straight kill them with their bare hands. You'd never think it to look at them, chanting and mediating all day on their mountain."

"Why didn't you just stay there with them?"

"Ah, I would have liked to," Keaton turned around and walked backwards for a few paces, looking up at the distant gate of the temple high above them. "I _tried_ to, at first. But then some things came up and they couldn't allow me to stay. It's a fucking pity. They have such a beautiful culture."

"What came up?"

The younger man sucked in a lungful of air and waggled his eyebrows. "I don't know if I'm ready to tell you that just yet."

"Are you serious? I told you my entire life story yesterday."

"Look, it's nothing particularly _bad_, it's just very personal and it could be dangerous if I tell the wrong person."

"And you think I'm the wrong person?"

"No! Not at all!" Keaton smiled and held up his hands. "I think you are the right person, actually."

"So…" Thelonious raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'll fucking tell you tomorrow, once we're well clear of Zhengzhou. Alright? For fuck's sake…"

It was nearly sunset by the time the reached the outskirts of the city. Or at least it had been an actual city at one point. Now it was a vast ruin. From a distance, Thelonious could see the skeletons of crumbling skyscrapers protruding above the treetops. They had to skirt around a lake and cross over a river on a frighteningly dilapidated bridge before finally they came upon the real village.

Most of the buildings were made of long, sturdy beams of wood, driven into raised earthen platforms and held held together through nothing but friction and gravity. Everything was pleasingly symmetrical and orderly. As it grew darker, people came out into the thoroughfare and lit lanterns. They glared suspiciously at Thelonious and Keaton as the pair passed by, but Keaton walked along smiling and waiving as if everything were normal.

"It doesn't seem so bad…" Thelonious was saying when all of a sudden two men came bursting through a doorway, tumbling out into their path. Keaton held his arm out in front of Thelonious, signaling for him to stop and watch.

The men wrestled in the muddy walkway between buildings, taking brutal swings at each other. One of them seemed to get the upper hand for a moment, dragged the other man over to a lantern, and proceeded to jam his head repeatedly into the stone. With blood pouring into his eyes, the second man threw all his weight backward, flipping them both back out into the street. The first man somersaulted awkwardly and landed flat on his back with a sickening crunch.

"I think that may be it," Keaton said under his breath.

The second man with the bloodied head went to stand over the other man as he squirmed in the mud, trying to escape. It was slow going. Suddenly, the bloody man picked up his foot and cracked the other one in the skull with the heel of his boot.

"Oh, that's definitely it."

Thelonious could only gape at the scene with a furrowed brow. His horror increased when the winner of the fight noticed them and approached with his arms held out wide, blood still dripping down his face.

"Lǎowài!" he shouted and pulled Keaton into a hug.


	12. Chapter 12

**Thelonious**

Keaton made a wide-eyed face at Thelonious over the bloody man's shoulder as they hugged. "Alright, Chen," he said in a strangled voice. "Rough fucking day, eh?"

Chen stepped back and brought his hands up to Keaton's cheeks, holding the blonde man's face between his palms for an awkward moment. Thelonious could see Keaton's obvious discomfort, but Chen seemed oblivious as he spoke to him in slow, slurry Mandarin. When he finally let go, he left a smudge of blood along Keaton's jaw.

"Do you understand anything he's saying?" Thelonious asked.

"No, not at all." Keaton slapped Chen on the shoulder and then gestured down the road in front of them. "Let's go see Han, then."

They stepped over the body of Chen's defeated foe and walked deeper into Zhengzhou. The whole scene reminded Thelonious of old photographs of the Wild West back when the United States was first establishing its empire, even though the details had a distinct eastern style. Underneath the rustic, graceful order to the architecture, he still sensed that chaos and lawlessness prevailed.

At one point they turned down an alley and walked past a line of prostitutes. Some of the women stared openly at Thelonious but none of them tried to get the three men's attention. Keaton, in particular, seemed to tense up as they passed. For once, Thelonious was genuinely glad that Wells wasn't there to see any of this.

"I'm sure you're wondering," Keaton said in a low voice, "why I choose to associate with someone who would beat a man to death in the middle of the fucking thoroughfare."

"The question _did_ cross my mind."

"Chen works for a man called Han who, notwithstanding his vicious streak, is the only person worth dealing with in this bloody shithole. I can communicate with him a bit and he's quite honorable, in his way."

_In his way? _Thelonious thought. "How do you communicate with him? Does he speak English?"

"He knows some words. How that happened, I have no fucking idea. Han's just… really smart. I mean, he's an absolute motherfucker. But in a town full of motherfuckers, he's the one you want on your side."

They arrived at a building that looked a bit larger and older than average with ornate carvings of animals around the doorjambs and lintel. Inside, Thelonious realized that it was some kind of public house. Men sat around tables drinking, talking, and playing a game with little carved tiles. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke, alcohol, and body odor.

"Keaton! Jaha!" A man called out from across the room.

"When Ping came to find me, he explained to Han about you are and how you came down from space," Keaton said as they walked over to him. "Or at least I assume that's what he said. They kept saying your name and pointing up at the ceiling…"

Han looked to be in his 50's and, although he was shorter than both Thelonious and Keaton, something about his slim physique seemed intimidating. He was actually quite handsome, with chiseled features and immaculately combed short, black hair. When Thelonious was near enough, Han held his hand out and they shook.

"Huānyíng. Welcome," he said in a heavy accent.

Thelonious and Keaton followed him through a beaded curtain into a smaller room that was apparently Han's office and they sat on the floor around a low table. Just like at the Shaolin Temple, a piece of paper and stick of charcoal were produced and through a series of drawings and a mishmash of English and Mandarin words, Keaton managed to convey their travel plans to Han.

They had drawn a rough map of the world and their route over the Bering Strait with a line leading all the way to the East Coast of the United States when Han made a concerned face and took the charcoal from them.

"No, no. Last war," he said, searching for the right words to use before reverting back to Mandarin. On the map where Washington D.C. would have been – the place Thelonious and Keaton were heading towards – Han drew a stick figure with an angry face. "U. S. A." he said, tapping the stick figure with the tip of the charcoal as he pronounced each letter. When Jaha and Keaton both nodded, Han drew some sort of arrow or missile in the figure's hand. "Bomb."

"Oh, I think I know where this is going," Keaton said quietly, giving Thelonious a look.

Han drew a line arcing straight up from the point of the missile and then brought it back down on the stick figure's own head. He made a sudden "PSHOOOOOO!" sound as he scribbled over the stick figure in fast, heavy strokes that eventually made the shape of a mushroom cloud. After pausing briefly to make sure his audience was still following him, he then started drawing arcs all over the map. One from America to Russia. One from Russia to America. Then China to America, England to Russia, America to China, and so on until the whole thing was a crisscross of destruction.

"He thinks the United States started the war by bombing themselves," Thelonious said to Keaton as he stared solemnly into Han's eyes. "This isn't the first time you've heard this theory in your travels."

Keaton leaned his elbow on the table and rested his chin against his fist. "No, I'm sorry I didn't mention it sooner. I suppose I was worried you might be offended."

"Why?" Thelonious turned to him. "It's not like people on the Ark didn't come up their own theories about the war. This one was fairly common, actually."

"Huh… But it doesn't follow, does it? Who would want to end the world? Why in bloody hell would the United States destroy themselves like that? And what fucking difference does it make now, anyway?

Thelonious looked back to Han and said, "He's trying to warn us."

"About what?" Keaton laughed incredulously. "We can hypothesize all fucking night about what happened a hundred years ago on the other side of the planet, but that won't get us any closer to the truth of it. It's all gone."

Looking down at the hand-drawn map and the angry stick figure, Thelonious wasn't sure. It _wasn't_ all gone. Mount Weather was still there. Everything else from before the war might have been bombed into the ground, but that facility remained like the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh. Maybe history's secrets were still buried inside.

**Clarke**

Their caravan – made up of what was left of the original hundred delinquents, Bodie and his Grounders, and Kane's scouting mission – walked south along the Shenandoah River towards the Teslatown camp. For most of the day, Clarke tried to walk at the front of the pack near Bodie and Kane so she could listen in on their conversations. Trying not to be too obvious, she stayed a couple of paces behind them, but it was nearly impossible to hear anything and she eventually gave up.

Clarke let herself fall out of step with the older men and hung back until she was walking next to Octavia and Raven on their dark horse. Octavia looked like a seasoned pro already, nudging the horse along with subtle pressure from her thighs. Raven rode behind her with her arms around Octavia's waist. She looked down with a half-hearted smile when Clarke approached.

"Hey guys," Clarke said. She wanted to run her hand along the horse's satiny flank, but she didn't want to spook it. Instead she made tentative eye contact with Raven. "How's your back?"

"All this bouncing around hurts like a bitch, but I can still feel my legs, so…"

"They say we'll be there soon," Clarke said with a sympathetic grimace. When Raven responded with a silent nod, Clarke took a deep breath and changed the subject. "Raven, I want to say I'm sorry for how I acted back there in Mount Weather. I didn't want to lie to you, but they were listening to everything and…"

"You don't have to apologize," Raven cut her off. "I get it. You were being smart. Had to put on a show for those ass clowns." Octavia let out an amused snort. Raven rested her cheek on the younger girl's shoulder, grinning down at Clarke as she asked, "Are you excited to see Abby?"

The question was a bit surprising. Clarke had almost forgotten that her mother was the whole reason Raven came down to the ground in the first place. When they first met, Raven had gushed about how much she admired Dr. Griffin and Clarke didn't bother trying to explain their strained relationship.

"Yeah, I can't wait," she said, forcing a smile. After an awkward silence, she figured maybe it would be better to just change the subject again. "Octavia, do you know what's going on between Finn and Bellamy?"

Octavia kept her focus on steering the horse, narrowing her eyes against the glare coming off of the snow. "They got into a fight."

Raven's brow furrowed and she tilted her head to get a look at Octavia's face. "What, like a fist fight?"

"Yep."

"What for?"

"I didn't hear how it started," Octavia said. "They were talking about something and all of a sudden Finn just tackled him."

Clarke stared at Octavia's profile. Her voice was bright, but her serious face didn't match. She was blinking rapidly and fidgeting with the horse's reigns. _She's lying_, Clarke thought. _She knows what they argued about, but she doesn't want to say_.

"So what happened?" Raven pressed.

"Lincoln stopped them before Bell smashed Finn's face in. Hey, there it is!"

"What? Where?" Clarke hopped up and down as she walked to see where Octavia was pointing. The caravan had come around a bend in the river and suddenly the forest ahead of them opened up on a lake. Mecha Station rose out of the water on the far side, looking like a metallic island. Clarke could just make out a cluster of ramshackle cabins half-hidden in the trees along the shore. _We're home_, she told herself and the thought made her heart swell in her chest.

As they got closer, Clarke could feel the mood of the group rising. Yes, it was freezing and they were all exhausted, but now the end was in sight. And not just the end of this walk to Teslatown from Mount Weather, but the end of a long, horrifying ordeal that started when their drop ship first crashed to the ground. People were smiling. There was a bounce in their steps.

But then a handful of guards came running out to meet them and the atmosphere changed abruptly. The caravan came to a halt as a tense conversation broke out at the front of the pack between Kane, Bodie and the guards.

From her vantage point atop the horse, Octavia could see what was happening more clearly than Clarke. "Something's wrong," she said, craning her neck. "Kane looks pissed."

"What the fuck? How did she get a gun?" Kane's voice rose just enough for Clarke to hear him.

Clarke jogged through the snow as best she could, pushing her way past people until she was up at the front again. As the other Grounders and guards leaned in, they formed a kind of huddle around Kane and Bodie, leaving Clarke to stand on the edge, straining to see and hear what was going on.

"Does she have anyone else in there?" Kane asked a guard.

"No, it's just Doctor Griffin. But Nygel seems pretty confident that you'll hand over power to keep her safe."

"What?!" Clarke tried to push into the center of the circle, but nobody would let her pass. "What's going on?"

She felt someone take her hand and give it a little squeeze. Bellamy was standing next to her with a grim look on his face. "It's your mom. She's being held hostage."

"Alright, how many guns do we have?" Kane asked the group.

"No!" Clarke shouted at him, even though she wasn't sure exactly what she was protesting. She grabbed at the shoulders of the men standing directly in front of her, trying to claw her way towards Kane, but they held firm.

"Wick, get her out of here!" Kane bellowed and then Clarke was being led away by a young man with a rifle. She strained in his grasp, twisting halfway around to see Bellamy following behind them with a determined look in his eye. But then Kane called out, "Blake, get back here! I have a job for you," and he turned back as Wick dragged Clarke away.

**Abby**

Every part of her body hurt. The ropes that held her to the chair were cutting into her skin and somehow the small of her back was starting to go numb. Through the haze of pain, she could hear Nygel and Callen arguing on the other side of the curtain. She couldn't make out the exact content, but she could still pick up on the stress in their voices.

_They're starting to realize they made a fatal mistake here_, she thought with a distant sense of smugness. Even if Abby was going to die in the process, Nygel wasn't going to come out of it any better.

Nygel slipped through the curtain and stepped into the backroom. There was a little metallic grating noise and then the light overhead blinked on. Nygel squatted down in front of Abby and pointed the pistol casually in her hostage's face.

"Unfortunately for you, Dr. Griffin," she said, "it doesn't look like Kane wants to negotiate."

Abby tried to give the woman her fiercest glare, gritting her teeth against the fabric of the gag. It was strange, she realized, how facing death like this made her angry instead of frightened. Was this how Clarke felt? How Jake felt?

And how did Nygel feel? Her mouth was grinning cruelly but her eyes were empty. For a moment, they stared at each other in total silence. But then there was a scraping sound above their heads and suddenly the room went pitch black.

"Fuck!" Nygel hissed.

Without the distraction of sight, the sound above them became much more clear. Someone was up there, messing with the solar panel on the roof. Abby heard a swish of clothing as Nygel stood up quickly. Then there was a brief pause before the pistol went off with a deafening boom. After that, Abby couldn't hear anything at all. She knew that she hadn't been shot and that was about all she could tell for certain.

Nygel grabbed at her roughly in the darkness, managing to get a hold on her hair and one of her arms, and dragged her through the curtain into the dim light of the main room. She was still tied to the chair and when its legs got stuck in the doorway, Nygel gave her a good yank and let her drop backwards onto the ground. Abby's head hit the wooden floorboards and she saw stars.

Eventually her normal vision returned but her ears were still completely overwhelmed by the sound of gunfire. Abby tilted her head back against the floor to get an upside-down view of the scene. Nygel ducked behind the metal door at the front of the cabin, sliding it aside just far enough to fire a series of shots through the opening. Callen crouched behind her, loading a second pistol.

Holes starting appearing in the wooden walls around the door and the outside sunshine came streaming through like laser beams. Abby supposed it was dumb luck that Nygel had dropped her flat on her back on the floor where she was mostly out of harm's way. Still, her legs were sticking up. _All it would take is one bullet through the femoral artery…_

Callen slumped awkwardly against Nygel and then tipped over onto the ground. Without hesitation, Nygel reached down to pry the second pistol out of his dead hand and started firing both guns at the same time. Wild panic was taking over, Abby knew. It was only a matter of time.

Out of nowhere, Abby felt a hand wrap around her upper arm. She snapped her head around to see a young man lying on his stomach next to her. As they stared silently at each other for a brief second, Abby realized she recognized his face from somewhere. With his free hand, he brought a pistol up to his lips in a shushing gesture and then aimed the gun carefully at Nygel's back.

_Oh, God_, Abby thought. _This is it. This is when I die_. If he missed, Nygel would turn around and shoot them both.

But he didn't miss. He hit her right in the back of the head and she fell forward against the opening of the doorway.

For a moment, the man leaned his forehead against the floor in evident relief. The gunfire coming from outside stopped. Then he sat up and started cutting Abby out of the chair with a hunting knife.

He was trying to say something to her, but her ears were completely useless. All she could hear was high pitched ringing. Staring at his face, trying to lip-read, she suddenly realized where she had seen him before.

"Bellamy Blake," Abby said when she had pulled the gag out of her mouth. But apparently he was just as deaf as she was. He looked so confused, his forehead wrinkling with concern as her looked back into her furious eyes.

"Are you okay?" She finally heard him say, though the sound was still fuzzy.

Before she could start yelling at him, the front door slid all the way open, dumping Nygel's body face-first into the snow. Two of Kane's guards stepped over her with their rifles at the ready, followed closely by Kane himself.

"Abby! Thank God!" Kane said as he rushed forward to help Bellamy lift Abby to her feet. "Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm alright," she said, even though she could feel just how weak her body had become over the last few days. She didn't want to, but she had to lean on Bellamy to keep from collapsing.

They had to practically carry her outside into the bright daylight. Abby turned her head against Kane's shoulder while her eyes adjusted. Gradually things started coming into focus: the pool of red leaking out of Nygel's head onto the white snow, strangers standing around with bows and arrows, Wick appearing from behind a building with…

"Mom?!"

"Clarke!"

_Am I dead?_ Abby wondered as she lurched forward. _Did Nygel kill me after all and this is just a dream or heaven or…_

Then Clarke was hugging her and crying and Abby knew it was really happening. She buried her face in her daughter's blonde hair and whispered, "Here you are, my beautiful girl! I thought I lost you forever…"

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Abby knew she was losing consciousness. Without Kane and Bellamy there to support her weight, she and Clarke sank to the ground. As Abby drifted away on a cloud of pure happiness, she could hear her daughter calling out to her. Then everything went black.

**Bellamy**

He was dead tired but still finding it impossible to sleep. The awful blue-green lights in Tesla station never turned off, the flimsy cot they told him to sleep on was freezing cold, and on top of everything he kept replaying scenes from earlier in the day on an endless loop in his head. He saw Christine's limp body tumbling down from the roof of Nygel's cabin and landing in a jumble at his feet. He saw the bullet pierce Nygel's skull. Over and over…

"Shut up," Anya growled from across the room.

"What?" Bellamy lifted his head up and glanced around. "Are you talking to me?"

"Yes. Shut up."

_What the fucking fuck? _Bellamy had been completely silent, hadn't he? What the hell was she talking about? He didn't even know what he was doing locked in a room with her anyway. Was he a prisoner?

After a while, the silence was broken by the sound of the door unlocking. Kane peeked inside and beckoned to Bellamy.

"Here's the deal," Kane said when they were alone in the corridor. "I don't know if I can ever fully trust you, but you _do _deserve your pardon. Clarke Griffin spoke very highly of you and you certainly proved your worth today."

Bellamy folded his arms across his chest and smirked. Just a few hours ago, Kane had justified throwing Bellamy into the middle of a firefight because he was considered expendable. What did Kane expect him to say to this? "Gee, thank you. It's a great honor to risk my life fighting for people who can barely tolerate my presence."

The glare Kane gave him was a clear warning. "I don't have to let you go, Blake. If you want to be snarky about it, you can stay locked up for all I care."

"What are you going to do with her?" Bellamy asked, nodding his head back towards the door.

"That hasn't been decided yet."

"What about Murphy?"

"What _about_ him?" Kane's eyes narrowed.

"He can't stay here in the camp. He's dangerous."

Kane smirked. "And what do you suggest we do?"

"We already banished him. I don't see why that decision should be reversed."

"Who's 'we'?"

"Clarke and I."

"Ah, you and Clarke," Kane's eyebrows lifted as he nodded sarcastically. "The wise judgment of a teenage girl and a janitor. Why not? You can go kick Murphy out of camp yourself. He's in the clinic."

Bellamy gave Kane one last suspicious look before heading out of Tesla Station. There were only a few scattered tents in this part of the camp and there was no sign of anyone being awake at this time of night. Besides the moon and stars, the only light source was coming from the distant clinic halfway down the valley.

When h got there, he slipped past the curtain carefully, trying not to let any of their warm air out. They had the stove going full blast and about twenty lanterns blazing. Nobody even looked up when Bellamy entered and he didn't blame them. He felt wiped-out just imagining what a long day they had, trying to cope without their surgeon.

Christine lay on one of the beds with her shirt torn away to reveal a huge piece of gauze taped over her stomach. Doctor Griffin's assistant – Jackson? – leaned over her, watching her sleeping face closely while he took her pulse. The nurse stood at the stove, cleaning equipment in a pot of boiling water. Doctor Griffin was passed out on the other bed. Her skin looked white as the snow and her cracked lips were a worrying purple color. Clarke was somehow asleep sitting up on the floor, using her folded arms as a pillow on the edge of her mother's bed.

Finally Jackson noticed him. "Mr. Blake!"

_Mr. Blake?_ "How are they doing?"

"Doctor Griffin needs an IV and Christine needs a blood transfusion, but they're both hanging in there for now," Jackson said, shrugging helplessly. "Thank you for what you did today, by the way."

Bellamy nodded and chewed on his lip. He was trying to think up a graceful response when Clarke suddenly stood up from the ground and shuffled over to him. "I need some fresh air. Come outside with me for a minute," she said.

When they were on the other side of the curtain, Clarke took off the parka Bellamy had given her and held it out to him. "Thank you for everything," she said. "I think I can manage without this now."

"Are you sure?" he asked, eyeing the heavy sweater from Mount Weather she was wearing. "I already have a jacket…"

"No, really. I'm fine. I've got layers." She patted the thick wool on her arms.

Bellamy frowned, his eyes trailing up from the sweater to her face. The glow from the lanterns inside the clinic fell softly across her delicate features, making her hair shine like gold. She looked so much older than when he had first met her in the drop ship and he cringed remembering how much he'd misjudged her at first. Of course she would want him to have the parka, even if it meant she would be cold. That's who Clarke was: putting everyone else first.

"Hey," he said, suddenly remembering why he came to the clinic in the first place. "Is Murphy around? Kane said I'd find him here."

"No, we had to move him to make room."

"_Move_ him?"

Clarke nodded, pressing her lips together and looking away. She obviously didn't want to tell him anything else about it, but Bellamy stared at her until she finally met his eyes and said, "My mom had to amputate his leg a few days ago. We put him in Sinclair's cabin if you want to see him."

"Oh." That explained Kane's weird reaction earlier. "So I'm assuming you would consider it inhumane to banish him again?"

Her expression twisted into a look of confused disgust. "Are you kidding me?"

Rolling his eyes, Bellamy started pulling the parka up over his arms. "Of course I'm not serious," he said. _But_ _Murphy still deserves to die and we both know it._ As Bellamy arched his back a bit to shift the parka fully up onto his shoulders, he felt a sharp twinge of pain in his rib.

"Are you alright?" Clarke asked, seeing him wince and grab his side. She stepped forward with both hands reaching for his ribcage but he waived her away.

"Yeah, just a cracked rib. It's fine. It's healing."

"God, Bellamy, you're falling apart. Broken rib, pneumonia, gun shot wound to the neck… Any other lingering injuries or illnesses you want to tell me about?"

"Nah," he said, giving her a little half-smile. "Maybe a couple of splinters from breaking into Nygel's cabin."

That made her smile. She tilted her head to the side and looked at him almost wistfully for a second before saying, "Well, take care of yourself, okay? Do you have somewhere warm to stay tonight?"

"I'll figure something out."

She looked unconvinced, but nodded anyway as he backed away from her. "Goodnight Bellamy. And thank you for my mom. Really."

"No problem. Goodnight, Princess."


End file.
